Modes and morals

+COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY+ HARPER & BROTHERS +COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY+ HENRY HOLT & COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1919, BY+ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY +COPYRI...

In some ways the life of the spirit and the life of the intellect have always been expensive. The more obvious material comforts--rich food, for example--have not been necessary...

Not only shall we not glorify our plumbing with marble; we shall see that there is really no sense in marble when porcelain will do as well--that marble has better uses and shou...

I am told that precisely the same standards prevail in the newer urban civilizations of England: it would seem to be an inevitable immediate result of the supremacy of riches. T...

Now there is this about a pragmatic truth: like any other invention of the devil, it smooths the road for the lazy. If it did not smooth the road, it would not be, by pragmatic...

I may have seemed to be showing rather the reasons for the extirpation of culture among us than the fact of the extirpation. Perhaps that is not the best way to go to work. But...

“Of course, some poor people were very nice, and always would be so, but as though scales had fallen suddenly from his eyes he saw that no one was nicer for being poor, and that...

I and my friends do not object to Ann and Hilda because we are afraid that, if we do not, people will think that we are like that. We object to them because we are told that the...

Conventional folk are often accused of being dull and valueless because they have no original opinions. (How we all love original opinions!) Well: very few people have any origi...

Moreover, when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with on...

I do not jeer at literal accuracy: I think it an excellent safeguard for all of us. The person who has never indulged in a literal falsehood is the less likely to have indulged...

Another point is perhaps even more interesting. There are not, I believe, any other books in the world so blatantly full of morality--of moral issues, and moral tests, and moral...

(My fortunate husband sang it in his youth.) But even that, while it could have a religious meaning, I should say, only for a sub-normal intelligence, is not a deliberate and ex...

Now we come to our syndicate. With which shall we begin? It is hard to choose. Indeed, can you deal with them separately? For the outstanding fact is that they all write alike;...

You may say that two facts these characters do often deal with: poverty and the sex instinct. Yes, they are sometimes poor, and have a hard time. But they have just as hard a ti...

As for saying that one has the same sense of personal insult in seeing a foreign land invaded as in seeing one’s own, that is nonsense. France has been the home of the spirit to...