
Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 136
Vol. I, ch. 21.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 136
As quoted in "Saroyan's Literary Quarantine" by Peter H. King, in The Los Angeles Times (26 March 1997).
“My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.”
“The whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it.”
Preface (1 February 1834)
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834)
Context: I don't know of any thing in my book to be criticised on by honourable men. Is it on my spelling? — that's not my trade. Is it on my grammar? — I hadn't time to learn it, and make no pretensions to it. Is it on the order and arrangement of my book? — I never wrote one before, and never read very many; and, of course, know mighty little about that. Will it be on the authorship of the book? — this I claim, and I hang on to it, like a wax plaster. The whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it. I would not be such a fool, or knave either, as to deny that I have had it hastily run over by a friend or so, and that some little alterations have been made in the spelling and grammar; and I am not so sure that it is not the worse of even that, for I despise this way of spelling contrary to nature. And as for grammar, it's pretty much a thing of nothing at last, after all the fuss that's made about it. In some places, I wouldn't suffer either the spelling, or grammar, or any thing else to be touch'd; and therefore it will be found in my own way.
But if any body complains that I have had it looked over, I can only say to him, her, or them — as the case may he — that while critics were learning grammar, and learning to spell, I, and "Doctor Jackson, L. L. D." were fighting in the wars; and if our hooks, and messages, and proclamations, and cabinet writings, and so forth, and so on, should need a little looking over, and a little correcting of the spelling and the grammar to make them fit for use, its just nobody's business. Big men have more important matters to attend to than crossing their ts—, and dotting their is—, and such like small things.
“I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality.”
This I Believe (1951)
Context: I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
On refusing the Republican nomination for Illinois governor, as quoted in "Ingersoll the Magnificent" (11 August 1954) by Joseph Lewis http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/lewis/lewing01.htm
Context: Good-by, gentlemen! I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois … I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world.
“Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.”
Review of the book My Hope for America (1964) by Lyndon B. Johnson
Cannibals and Christians (1966)
"Sentimental Heart".
She & Him : Volume One (2008)
“I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.”
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
“Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.”
"1941"
A Writer's Notebook (1946)