'He [the truly ethical man] breaks no leaf from the tree, plucks no flower, is careful to crush no insect with his feet. When he works by his lamp in the summer evening, he prefers to keep his window shut and to breathe the stifling air rather than to see insect after insect falling on his table with singed wings. If after a rain he is walking on the road and sees an earthworm gone astray, he remembers it will dry up in the sun if it does not get back in time to the earth into which it can burrow, and helps it from the fatal stones into the grass. If he comes upon an insect fallen into a puddle, he takes time to save it by extending a leaf or a stalk to it. He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is the fate of every truth to be ridiculed before it is recognized. It was once considered stupid to think colored men were really human and must be treated humanely. The time is coming when people will be amazed that it took so long for mankind to recognize that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with ethics.'
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Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.
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Whenever people say, 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.'
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The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.
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Our whole life is an attempt to discover when our spontaneity is whimsical, sentimental irresponsiblity and when it is a valid expression of our deepest desires and values.
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Even my aunt Joan, hopelessly sentimental about every member of our family, admitted that I was hideous.
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Beware of sentimental alliances where the consciousness of good deeds is the only compensation for noble sacrifices.
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Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake.
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To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.
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The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.
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I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last; a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.
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We're a sentimental people. We like a few kind words better than millions of dollars given in a humiliating way.
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Whenever people say 'we mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, 'we must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.
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What a man calls his conscience is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.
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