Sentimentality Quotes

• I don't trust sentimentality in men; it goes with tyranny; you can't have one without the other.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Men, Tyranny, Don't Trust

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• There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Moral, Subtle

  Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1974). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Sentimentality is a form of fatigue.

  Leonora Carrington

  Form, Fatigue

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• 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

  Sorry, Fog, Essence

  John Cheever, Blake Bailey (2009). “John Cheever: Collected Stories and Other Writings”

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• Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something-an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Struggle, Men, Air

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2007). “The Great Gatsby”, p.127, Broadview Press

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• A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Emotional, Luxury, Feelings

  Oscar Wilde, Moira Muldoon (2005). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings”, p.348, Simon and Schuster

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• Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

  Timothy Keller

  Love, Marriage, Giving

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.31, Penguin

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• We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Fall, Reality, Opposites

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• Sentimentality is a basking in feelings that in reality you don't take seriously enough to make the slightest sacrifice to or ever translate into action.

  Hermann Hesse

  Sacrifice, Reality, Feelings

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• Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

  James Joyce

  Sentimental, Emotion

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• Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.

  Carl Jung

  Covering, Brutality, Sentimental

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• Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches.

  Jane Jacobs

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.447, Vintage

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• Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Life, Acceptance, Love Is

  Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate, w2.vatican.va. June 29, 2009.

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• Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Hands, Style

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

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

  George Meredith

  Done, Enjoy, Immense

  George Meredith (1922). “The Complete Works of George Meredith”, p.473, Library of Alexandria

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• Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just. Such a God is an idol of your own.

  J. C. Ryle

  Idols, Mercy, Manufacturing

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• Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inability, Emotion, Dishonesty

  "Everybody’s Protest Novel". Essay by James A. Baldwin (1949), as quoted in "Uneasy Rider" by Alexandra Schwartz, www.newyorker.com. November 9, 2015.

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• Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

  Wallace Stevens

  Feelings, Emotion

  1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

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• Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Way, Sentimental, Sentiments

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

  Alexander Payne

  Thinking, Age, Lasts

  "Alexander Payne: Life after Sideways" by Simon Hattestone, www.theguardian.com. January 13, 2012.

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• Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fancy, Crystals, Emotion

  James Russell Lowell (1857). “Literary essays; Among my books, My study windows, Fireside travels”, p.252

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• I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.

  Max Beckmann

  Believe, Objectivity, Painting

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• The barrenest of all mortals is the sentimentalist.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Sentimental, Sentiments, Mortals

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.9, Cambridge University Press

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• In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.

  William S. Burroughs

  Grief, Sadness, Deep Sadness

  "Queer: A Novel". Book by William S. Burroughs, 1985.

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• Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.

  Norman Mailer

  Emotional, Sentimental, Sentiments

  Cannibals and Christians (1966) p. 51

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