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Literary notes about Disabuse (AI summary)

The word "disabuse" in literature is often employed to indicate the deliberate correction or removal of erroneous beliefs or superstitions. In Emerson’s essay, for example, it serves as a call to liberate the mind from archaic notions tied to places, times, and numbers [1]. Similarly, Hardy directs his character to dispel misconceptions that might become obstacles in personal relationships [2], while Dostoyevsky ponders the difficulty of undoing entrenched suspicions [3]. Mackay and Freud use the term to highlight the societal need to overcome widespread delusions or harmful errors [4][5], and Gogol employs it humorously to describe the stubborn persistence of false ideas even in mundane social situations [6]. Together, these examples reveal how "disabuse" is utilized as a powerful rhetorical tool to advocate for clarity and the abandonment of misguided beliefs.
  1. The first step of worthiness will be to disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and times, with number and size.
    — from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  2. So please—please, dear Tessy, disabuse your mind of the feeling that you will stand in my way.
    — from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy
  3. Elle me soupçonnera toute sa vie … and how can I disabuse her?
    — from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  4. He took no pains to disabuse the popular mind on this particular, but rather encouraged the belief than otherwise.
    — from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
  5. I wish to disabuse your minds of this harmful error.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  6. As a rule, folk avoid me like the devil, for they cannot disabuse their minds of the idea that I am going to ask them for a loan.
    — from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

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