Like many of you, I have spent some time watching (or re-watching) movies and television shows during this time of quarantine. One of those was "Downton Abbey," a fictional account of a British estate and their household and community during the first third of the twentieth century.
One of the mainstays is the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith. She has some remarkable and witty lines. But as I was watching recently one stung:
“Hope is a tease, designed to prevent us accepting reality.”
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