The Sentimentalists Quotes & Sayings

Sentimentalists are they who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done. — George Meredith

Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It — G.K. Chesterton

Vegetarians are at best kindly but unrealistic. At worst they are delusional sentimentalists. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. — G.K. Chesterton

there are many ignorant sentimentalists who believe that our government is deserving of our loyal cooperation and support, and that every good patriot with an innocent conscience should be glad to answer any questions from government agents. That is hogwash. — James Duane

It's good for you to see your friends arrested. It hardens you. There's no place in our New Order for sentimentalists. — Curt Siodmak

Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation - they are the normal endings of the stately creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness. — Theodore Roosevelt

I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists. — Oscar Wilde

Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a determined refusal to listen to others. Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the ivory trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own cabinet booted her out.(...)She will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity. — Morrissey

Do we want to feel better or do we want to be effective? Are we sentimentalists or are we warriors? — Lierre Keith

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

They are all sentimentalists at heart, the Poldarks, Verity thought, and she realized suddenly for the first time that it was a dangerous trait, far more dangerous than any cynicism. — Winston Graham

The trouble is, we are incurable sentimentalists. We insist on makin over historical characters to suit our preconceived notions of what they should be, chipping, sandpapering, and polishing each personality until it assumes what we consider the proper contour and color. — Nancy Byrd Turner

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law. — Herman Wouk

The epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe operations which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimentalists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectators. — George Bernard Shaw

Sentimentalists ... adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel ... Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

An oxymoronic combination of the tough and tender, [Of Mice and Men] will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists ... Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
[Time 1937] — Time-Life Books

Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalists. It will give us the peace that springs from understanding. — Oscar Wilde

If there is anybody I detest, it is weak-minded sentimentalists-all those melancholy people who, out of an excess of sympathy for others, miss the thrill of their own essence and drift through life without identity, like a human fog, feeling sorry for everyone. — John Cheever