Men who have lost their conviction of what is good and what is bad find themselves without a … - John Dos Passos

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To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

John Dos Passos

Men who have lost their conviction of what is good and what is bad find themselves without a sextant to check their position by. We are in the position of a man with an elaborate camping kit who finds himself lost in the woods without his matches; to kindle a fire he has to resort to the stratagems of the caveman. We fall back through generations into the oldest terrors and confusions of the race.

Fall, Fire, Kindle, Men, Position, Woods

Same Author Quotes

People don't choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.

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Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. . . . In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.

Art, Block, Danger, Generation, Men, Sense

If there is a special Hades for writers is would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

Contemplation, Forced, Special, Works, Would Be, Writers

The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.

Add, Brick, Generations, Views, Worse

Democracy evolves where freedom is able to determine its own policy.

Able, Democracy, Determine, Evolves, Freedom