The matter of "right and wrong” was a subject in which he had long been interested. Indeed, it had been a deeply personal concern ever since, early in his career, he had detected a great distinction between morality and honor. "I have never met a thoroughly moral man who was honorable,” he had written in Prejudices, by which he had meant that fervently moral men would employ any means, including dishonorable ones, to achieve their ends.
H. L. MenckenRelated topics
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No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
Charlotte Brontë
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
Woodrow Wilson
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help The notice which you have been pleased to take care of my labors, had it been early, had been kind but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it till I am solitary, and cannot impart it till I am known, and do not want it.
Samuel Johnson
'War,' says Machiavelli, 'ought to be the only study of a prince' and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. 'He ought,' says this great political doctor, 'to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans. 'A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
Edmund Burke
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
Ernest Hemingway