The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of complim...ents. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is the day when people reciprocally offer, and receive, the kindest and the warmest wishes, though, in general, without meani...ng them on one side, or believing them on the other. They are formed by the head, in compliance with custom, though disavowed by the heart, in consequence of nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For your God of dream or devil You will answer, not to me.... Talk about the pews and steeples And the Cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian peoples . . . Chuck it, Smith!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he rev...olts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, So I make an idle boast;... Jesus of the twice-turned cheek Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How damned ridiculous it all is! The long generations toiling--skimping, lashing themselves screwing higher and higher the tension... of their minds, polishing brighter and brighter the mirror of intelligence to end in this--My God what a time--All the cant and hypocrisy, all the damnable survivals, all the vestiges of old truths now putrid and false infect the air, choke you worse than German gas--The ministers from their damn smug pulpits, the business men--the heroics about war--my country right or wrong--oh infinities of them! Oh the tragic farce of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man... by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »