“Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.”
"Now That Men Can Cry..." (1977), p. 290
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wilfrid Sheed 50
English-American novelist and essayist 1930–2011Related quotes
“Life is too short to be lived badly.”
Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
§ IV
1910s, At the Feet of the Master (1911)
Context: Then as to cruelty. This is of two kinds, intentional and unintentional. Intentional cruelty is purposely to give pain to another living being; and that is the greatest of all sins — the work of a devil rather than a man. You would say that no man could do such a thing; but men have done it often, and are daily doing it now. The inquisitors did it; many religious people did it in the name of their religion. Vivisectors do it; many schoolmasters do it habitually. All these people try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all.
Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 13, Gerber Life: Like Taking Candy From A Baby, p. 239.
“Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.”
“Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books.”
“What is liberal education,” p. 6
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)
“Life can seem short or life can seem long, depending on how you live it.”
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym
“I felt that it was an unnecessary loss of civilian life…”
On the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as quoted by his widow, who also stated that he had "always felt badly over the dropping of that bomb because he said we had Japan beaten already" in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (1995) by Gar Alperovitz
Context: I felt that it was an unnecessary loss of civilian life... We had them beaten. They hadn't enough food, they couldn't do anything.
