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Maria grounded me in my history and my present. Have you ever met someone who was just good? Who, when you came across complicated moral questions, was programmed into your phone as “certain virtue”? This was Maria, exactly.
–Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall
This novel won the Lambda Literary Award: Transgender. A review can be seen HERE. More award winners can be found on the Amazon.com Lambda Literary Award: Transgender listing.
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An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
–On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Note: See the review.
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One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it…
–On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Note: See the review.
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Virtue
“Virtue is relative at best
There’s nothing worse than a sunset
When you’re driving due west”“And I know that sometimes
All I can see is how I feel
Like the whole world is on
The other side of
A dirty windshield”
–Up Up Up Up Up UP by Ani DiFranco
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“An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble, is one of whom the angels doubtless say, “Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own welfare in jeopardy to succor his neighbor’s; let us exalt this magnanimous liar.””
–On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Note: See the review.
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“Lying is universal–we all do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily…as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather.“
–On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Note: See the review.
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“The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious.”
“Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. ”
“Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest.”
–The Soul of Man Under Socialism (Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wild)
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I suspect that it goes without saying, but I shall say it anyway: Mark Twain is one of those rare authors who can actually get away with saying something like this. And, in true Twain fashion, if you read the entire work, you will find the quote means much more when read in context.
I wish I could write half as well.
Quote:
“No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances–the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.“