punctilious compunctious

Wow! Reading the emotional tumult of my last post simultaneously horrifies and amuses me. Then I realize that I must rise above myself to my true desired intellectual aspirations.

This past week I've been reading a strange collection of essays published in 1921, from a now near-forgotten writer. Reading these essays, I realize how my criticisms of this country have been aired 80 years ago.

“Our morality system has become a mechanical device for protecting us against ourselves; it is the handiwork of terror.”
“More and more our civilization is becoming a not a civilization of free men but of moral cowards.” - Harold Stearns “An Question of Morals” America and the Young Intellectuals

A New Yorker tidbit I ran into:

“Intelligence allied to honesty allied to wit is a powerful charm.” - Adam Gopnick- on Kingsley Amis, New Yorker 4-23-2007

This is a combination I aspire to, along with a dose of deep emotion thrown in. My sympathy always tied to my sardonic humor.