The doctor's wife wasn't a bad woman. She was sufficiently convinced of her own importance to believe that God actually did watch everything she did and listen to everything she said, and she was too taken up with rooting out the pride she was prone to feeling in her own holiness to notice any other failings she might have had. She was a do-gooder, which means that all the ill she did, she did without realizing it. Diane Setterfield
About This Quote

In this quote, Doctor John was speaking to the doctor's wife. He was making a comparison between her and his wife from his perspective, from the perspective of someone who loves his wife. He is stating that she was a good woman in the sense that she was a good person. However, he is also saying that she was a do-gooder in the sense that she thought that her word was law and that everything that happened in her life had been decreed by God.

He is comparing her to his wife who would not even think of believing what the doctor said about himself and how he would not assume such things about his wife. From this he is saying that you should not assume things about other people without knowing the truth yourself.

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  1. Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born.. Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out...
  2. All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more...
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