This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.
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Discrimination due to age is one of the great tragedies of modern life. The desire to work and be useful is what makes life worth living, and to be told your efforts are not needed because you are the wrong age is a crime.
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Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does? The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
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Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
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The most disturbing and wasteful emotions in modern life, next to fright, are those which are associated with the idea of blame, directed against the self or against others.
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Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
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In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
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