Sneers Quotes

“Anti-religious sneers are a hallmark of perpetual adolescents.”

“He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary.”

“Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.”

“If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitous man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may-no matter how generous and good his nature- one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so.”

“I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal.”

“Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter—every form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation—every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad—have been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which—in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders—some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive.”

“We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.”

“We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or 
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
 seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the 
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.”

“They will call you immoral if you dare to describe their immorality”