Charles Baudelaire quote: “I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

“Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?
When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as this dead man had piled up—without making one loyal friend to mourn him, without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honor. But when the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of business as if the earth, too, shuddered under a blow.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter I: "Bad News"

“Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government … The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done.”

Peter Benenson (1921–2005) English human rights activist

Benenson (1961), in: The Observer, 28 May 1961.
Opening of article, which gave birth to Amnesty International.

“No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 7 (p. 52)

“It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Impressions and Comments http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8ells10.txt (1914)

“A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 147

“A son honors his father,
And a servant his master.
If then I am the Father,
Where is my honor?
And if I am a Master,
Where is My reverence?”

Malachi Biblical prophet

Source: Book of Malachi, Chapter 1, Verse 6, Lines 1-6 (NKJV)

“I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands… But on the other hand, I am the law!”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Context: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.

“I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that the science of handing pig-iron is so great that the man who is fit to handle pig-iron as his daily work cannot possibly understand the science”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 110.
Context: I ordinarily begin with a description of the pig-iron handler. For some reason, I don’t know exactly why, this illustration has been talked about a great deal, so much, in fact, that some people seem to think that the whole of scientific management consists in handling pig-iron. The only reason that I ever gave this illustration, however, was that pig-iron handling is the simplest kind of human effort; I know of nothing that is quite so simple as handling pig-iron. A man simply stoops down and with his hands picks up a piece of iron, and then walks a short distance and drops it on the ground. Now, it doesn’t look as if there was very much room for the development of a science; it doesn’t seem as if there was much room here for the scientific selection of the man nor for his progressive training, nor for cooperation between the two sides; but, I can say, without the slightest hesitation, that the science of handing pig-iron is so great that the man who is fit to handle pig-iron as his daily work cannot possibly understand the science; the man who is physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron; and this in ability of the man who is fit to do the work to understand the science of doing his work becomes more and more evident as the work becomes more complicated, all the way up the scale. I assert, without the slightest hesitation, that the high-class mechanic has a far smaller chance of ever thoroughly understanding the science of his work than the pig-iron handler has of understanding the science of his work, and I am going to try and prove to your satisfaction, gentlemen, that the man who is fit to work at any particular trade is unable to understand the science of that trade without the kindly help and cooperation of men of a totally different type of education, men whose education is not necessarily higher but a different type from his own.

“There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 264.

“The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

as quoted in "Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism" by Robert Skidelsy http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1256603608595872&url=www.geocities.com/monedem/keyn.html
Essays in Persuasion (1931), Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
Context: When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease … But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Charles Baudelaire 133

Related quotes

Related topics