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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Gamard's mind, or stating to himself the pettiness of her ideas, the
poor abbe perceived, unfortunately too late, the defects which she
shared with all old maids, and those which were peculiar to herself.
The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that
they usually strike our eyes before they wound us. This moral
phenomenon might, at a pinch, be made to excuse the tendency we all
have, more or less, to gossip. It is so natural, socially speaking, to
laugh at the failings of others that we ought to forgive the ridicule
our own absurdities excite, and be annoyed only by calumny. But in
this instance the eyes of the good vicar never reached the optical
range which enables men of the world to see and evade their
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