‘Yes, Maggie,’ said Philip, vehemently, ‘and you are shutting yourself up in a narrow self-delusive fanaticism which is only a way of escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your nature. Joy and peace are not resignation: resignation is the willing endurance of a pain that is not allayed – that you don’t expect to be allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation: and it is stupefaction to remain in ignorance – to shut up all the avenues by which the life of your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned: I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that
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