I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks. Edward Dahlberg More Quotes by Edward Dahlberg More Quotes From Edward Dahlberg Men are too unstable to be just; they are crabbed because they have not passed water at the usual time, or testy because they have not been stroked or praised. Edward Dahlberg usual water men There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment. Edward Dahlberg evil men long The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature. Edward Dahlberg toady mimicking poetic Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away. Edward Dahlberg misery giving men It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others-and it is vile not to endeavor to do it. Edward Dahlberg coarse endeavor assuming Utility is our national shibboleth: the savior of the American businessman is fact and his uterine half-brother, statistics. Edward Dahlberg business half brother Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil. Edward Dahlberg writing people art The newspaper has debauched the American until he is a slavish, simpering, and angerless citizen; it has taught him to be a lump mass-man toward fraud, simony, murder, and lunacies more vile than those of Commodus or Caracalla. Edward Dahlberg taught citizens men Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement. Edward Dahlberg achievement failure failing We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives. Edward Dahlberg sin evil writing Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking. Edward Dahlberg ocean ambition work Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages. Edward Dahlberg funeral heaven book Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review. Edward Dahlberg silence criticism men One cat in a house is a sign of loneliness. Edward Dahlberg cat loneliness house What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful. Edward Dahlberg luck writing men We are always talking about being together, and yet whatever we invent destroys the family, and makes us wild, touchless beasts feeding on technicolor prairies and rivers. Edward Dahlberg technology rivers talking Every decision you make is a mistake. Edward Dahlberg optimistic business mistake The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy. Edward Dahlberg cafeteria self heart We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain. Edward Dahlberg solitude cities people Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves. Edward Dahlberg vices evil men
