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7a851b5
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A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts...
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John Dos Passos |
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73bd36b
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The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." -John Dos Passos"
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John Dos Passos |
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a6ac2b1
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The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed i..
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John Dos Passos |
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fcc2e24
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life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.
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John Dos Passos |
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7248dde
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self respect. self reliance. self control.
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John Dos Passos |
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dc085eb
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With people who are young and aren't scared you can do lots.
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John Dos Passos |
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f8092af
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was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass, he walked through the woods one winter crunching through the shinycrusted snow stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was and found the grass green and weeds sprouting and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb, He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural Selection that wasn't what they taught in church, so ceased to believe moved ..
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t-h-huxley
thomas-h-huxley
thomas-henry-huxley
thomas-huxley
huxley
herbert-spencer
spencer
luther-burbank
charles-darwin
darwin
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John Dos Passos |
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a4e0bd1
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While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.
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John Dos Passos |
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3b9e716
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The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich;
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John Dos Passos |
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4c1ff7d
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One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that night: It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.
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John Dos Passos |
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7fca93d
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The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world.
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John Dos Passos |
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4a6f926
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Do you know how long God took to destroy the Tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There's more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City and Brooklyn and the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven Seconds.
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manhattan
new-york-city
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John Dos Passos |
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362ec25
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all right we are two nations
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John Dos Passos |
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f970c03
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Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?
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John Dos Passos |
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29956bb
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What's the use of a lague of nations if it's to be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?" said Mr. Rasmussen sourly. "But don't you think any kind of a league's better than nothing?" said Eveline. "It's not the name you give things, it's who's getting theirs underneath that counts," said Robbins. "That's a very cynical remark," said the California woman. "This isn't any time to be cynical." "This is a time," said Robbins, "when if we..
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John Dos Passos |
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1c61a37
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So many Americans felt that their neighbor had no right to know more than they did.
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John Dos Passos |
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635fa67
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But the workingpeople, the common people, they won't allow it.' 'It's the common people who get most fun out of the torture and execution of great men.... If it's not going too far back I'd like to know who it was demanded the execution of our friend Jesus H. Christ.
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saccho-vanzetti
strikes
working-class
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John Dos Passos |
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436ee0d
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U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world's greatest river..
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John Dos Passos |
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287fd67
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but on account of the flag and prosperity and making the world safe for democracy, they were afraid to be with him, or to think much about him for fear they might believe him; for he said: While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.
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John Dos Passos |
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7136ad1
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Print so easily spins a web of the commonplace over the fine outlines of life.
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John Dos Passos |
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21f0ce8
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and the Sunday the bishop came you couldn't see Halley's Comet any more and you saw the others being confirmed and it lasted for hours because there were a lot of little girls being confirmed too and all you could hear was mumble mumble this thy child mumble mumble this thy child and you wondered if you'd be alive next time Halley's Comet came round
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John Dos Passos |
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1b2b777
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But you just watch, little girl. I'm goin' to show 'em. In five years they'll come crawlin' to me on their bellies. I don't know what it is, but I got a kind of feel for the big money.
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stock-market-crash
stock-market
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John Dos Passos |
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16693db
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Spain as a modern centralized nation is an illusion, a very unfortunate one; for the present atrophy, the desolating resultlessness of a century of revolution, may very well be due in large measure to the artificial imposition of centralized government on a land essentially centrifugal.
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John Dos Passos |
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31c67b3
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Weisst du, Jimmy, ich glaube, es wird ganz lustig sein, ein Weilchen in einer Redaktion zu sitzen." "Ich fande es schon sehr lustig, wenn ich _irgendwo_ sitzen durfte... Na ja, da bleibe ich eben zu Haus und passe auf das Baby auf." "Sei nicht so verbittert, Jimmy, es ist ja nur vorubergehend." "Das ganze Leben ist nur vorubergehend." (S. 250)"
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John Dos Passos |
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199b25f
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If any man has a ghost Bourne has a ghost a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York,
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John Dos Passos |
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8b62e84
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between Don Quixote the mystic and Sancho Panza the sensualist there is no middle ground.
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John Dos Passos |
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285df87
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The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious. Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. Civilization will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking will never again be closed to the methods of modern man. The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral, has begun, and revolutions never move backwa..
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John dos Passos |
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ec2be4b
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How do I get to Broadway?...I want to get to the center of things.
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John Dos Passos |
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34ad971
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The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.
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John Dos Passos |
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ddbdb78
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There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn... Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.
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new-york-city
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John Dos Passos |
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e485f4c
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Men seemed to have shrunk in stature before the vastness of the mechanical contrivances they had invented. Michael Angelo, da Vinci, Aretino, Cellini; would the strong figures of men ever so dominate the world again? Today everything was congestion, the scurrying of crowds; men had become ant-like. Perhaps it was inevitable that the crowds should sink deeper and deeper in slavery. Whichever won, tyranny from above, or spontaneous organizati..
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John Dos Passos |
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f6a4349
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It seems to me," he said very softly, "that human society has been always that, and perhaps will be always that: organizations growing and stifling individuals, and individuals revolting hopelessly against them, and at last forming new societies to crush the old societies and becoming slaves again in their turn...." "I thought you were a socialist," broke in Genevieve sharply, in a voice that hurt him to the quick, he did not know why."
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John Dos Passos |
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98399f0
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The pressure exerted by a gas on the walls of its container does not depend upon the individual histories of the molecules composing it," says the French existentialist philosopher."
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John dos Passos |
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fbac89b
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It would mean," he told the editor of the New York World, "that we would lose our heads along with the rest and stop weighing right and wrong. It would mean that a majority of people in this hemisphere would go war mad, quit thinking, and devote their energies to destruction . . . Conformity will be the only virtue. And every man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty . . . Once lead this people into war and they'll forget ther..
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John dos Passos |
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fc109a7
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Think of what it was they were applauding," he said at last. "My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that."
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John dos Passos |
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5a2c87a
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With people like that we needn't despair of civilisation,
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John Dos Passos |
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0a7ece4
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Chrisfield looked straight ahead of him. He did not feel lonely any more now that he was marching in ranks again. His feet beat the ground in time with the other feet. He would not have to think whether to go to the right or to the left. He would do as the others did.
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John Dos Passos |
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fb38ca8
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there can be no reason to believe these officers of an established news organization serving newspapers all over the country failed to realize their responsibilities at a moment of supreme significance to the people of this country.
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John Dos Passos |
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d07aea9
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How grave a disappointment it must be to our great President, who has exerted himself so to bring the German people to reason, to make them understand the horror that they alone have brought deliberately upon the world! Alas! Far from it. Indeed, they have attempted with insidious propaganda to undermine the morale of our troops...." A little storm of muttered epithets went through the room. The Reverend Dr. Skinner elevated his chubby pink..
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John Dos Passos |
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5bd4a13
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Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant's Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight.
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John Dos Passos |
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3c78590
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But how glum he looks now." She threw some daisies at him. Then, after a pause, she added mockingly: "It's hunger, my dear. Good Lord, how dependent men are on food!"
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John Dos Passos |
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5790d9c
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admire the United
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John Dos Passos |
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1ebe782
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y. I told them to admire us for the hope we still have that there is enough goodness in man to use the omnipotence science has given him to ennoble his life on earth instead of degrading it. Self government, through dangers and distortions and failures, is the American
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John Dos Passos |
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0f73c4e
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Think, man, think of all the oceans of lies through all the ages that must have been necessary to make this possible! Think of this new particular vintage of lies that has been so industriously pumped out of the press and the pulpit. Doesn't it stagger you?" Martin"
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John Dos Passos |