What would a man be – what would any man be – without his clothes? As soon as one stops and thinks about that proposition, one realizes that without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them […]
Mark Twain Quotes
Titles- another artificiality- are a part of clothing. They and the (clothes) conceal the wearer’s inferiority and make him seem great and a wonder, when at bottom there is nothing remarkable about him.
Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are […]
There is no salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level.
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.
There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.
In the South the war is what AD is elsewhere; they date from it.
Every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution.
Human nature cannot be studied in cities except at a disadvantage – a village is the place. There you can know your man inside and out – in a city you but know his crust; and his crust is usually a lie.
