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  "title": "The Water Is Wide",
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide",
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      "slug": "teaching-is-a-record",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/teaching-is-a-record",
      "text": "Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.",
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      "slug": "and-in-that",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/pat-conroy/the-water-is-wide/and-in-that",
      "text": "And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.",
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      "page": 196,
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      "slug": "i-learned-that",
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      "text": "I learned that politicians are not supposed to help people. They simply listen to people, nod their heads painfully, commiserate at proper intervals, promise to do all they can, and then do nothing. It was very instructive. I could probably have enlisted more action from a bleached jellyfish washed ashore in a seasonal storm.",
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      "slug": "there-were-these",
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      "text": "There were these deep, serious thoughts I sometimes had to drive from my head like flocks of pesky starlings. I was too pragmatic and impatient to let such thoughts flog me into impotence, yet I sincerely needed a working philosophy on which to hang my hat. After the Halloween trip, one began to form and crystallize without my knowledge, and when I finally acknowledged its presence, it was already a part of me: simply, that life was good, but it was hard; we would prepare to meet it head on, but we would enjoy the preparation.",
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