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101 " What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like " So-and-so is in the flower of his youth" , which is as absurd as saying " in the vagina of his youth" . "
102 " I've always jumped on sentiment—and here I am being more sentimental than anybody. What idiots girls are! I've always thought so. I suppose I shall sleep with his photograph under my pillow, and dream about him all night. It's dreadful to feel you've been false to your principles. "
― Agatha Christie , The Secret Adversary (Tommy and Tuppence, #1)
103 " New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East "
104 " I've got everything I need right here." That sentimental thought met a room full of cheesy and sarcastic " aw's" and an empty water bottle thrown at my head. No, stop guys, really. You're embarrassing me. "
105 " Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth. Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error … Architects are as intolerant about sand as foundations for skyscrapers as doctors are intolerant about germs in the laboratory. Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability. "
― Fulton J. Sheen
106 " Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down. "
― Tracy Chevalier , At the Edge of the Orchard
107 " Now against the specialist, against the man who studies only art or electricity, or the violin, or the thumbscrew or what not, there is only one really important argument, and that, for some reason or other, is never offered. People say that specialists are inhuman; but that is unjust. People say an expert is not a man; but that is unkind and untrue. The real difficulty about the specialist or expert is much more singular and fascinating. The trouble with the expert is never that he is not a man; it is always that wherever he is not an expert he is too much of an ordinary man. Wherever he is not exceptionally learned he is quite casually ignorant. This is the great fallacy in the case of what is called the impartiality of men of science. If scientific men had no idea beyond their scientific work it might be all very well — that is to say, all very well for everybody except them. But the truth is that, beyond their scientific ideas, they have not the absence of ideas but the presence of the most vulgar and sentimental ideas that happen to be common to their social clique. If a biologist had no views on art and morals it might be all very well. The truth is that the biologist has all the wrong views of art and morals that happen to be going about in the smart set of his time. "
108 " Inside the front flap of the book were handwritten names of the dozen or so people who had checked the book out before Naomi. Instead of writing her name, Naomi had a thin paper receipt with the due date printed on it. She could never possess this book the way those other people had. It was one of those uselessly nostalgic and sentimental thoughts that serve only our own romantic ideals, but I couldn't help believing it was true nonetheless. I took a pencil out from behind the register and handed it to her. "
― Dinaw Mengestu , The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
109 " Sentimentalist” is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel, thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse than to be cruel, which it isn’t. "
― Brigid Brophy
110 " How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared? "
111 " And remember my sentimental friend that a heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others. "
112 " The mind supplies the idea of a nation but what gives this idea its sentimental force is a community of dreams. "
113 " To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. "
114 " Our whole life is an attempt to discover when our spontaneity is whimsical sentimental irresponsibility and when it is a valid expression of our deepest desires and values. "
115 " The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow. "
116 " I think the philosophy that you have to have if you travel frequently is, stuff is just stuff. Even if it has some sentimental or family connection, if you lose it in the world, it's still just a thing, and I think if you don't have that attitude, you will get incredibly stressed out and not enjoy your travels. "
117 " I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't. "
― F. Scott Fitzgerald , This Side of Paradise
118 " I have too much respect for people to try to control them. But they are estranged from love, afraid to reach out and touch one another. We're afraid to appear sentimental or speak in platitudes because people will say, 'What a jerk!' It takes courage in our culture to be a lover. "
119 " In the graver and more sentimental communication of man and man, the head still bears the superior sway; in the unreserved intimacies of man and woman, the heart is ever uppermost. Feeling is the main thing, and judgment passes for little. "
120 " I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness. "