A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible in order to get relief.
John Dos PassosRead
Love is cheap. You can buy it anywhere. Lives are cheap. It's money that's dear. You have to work days and sit up nights thinking how to make money.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that love and life are easily accessible, but the pursuit of money is what requires effort and dedication.
John Dos Passos highlights the irony of modern life where emotional connections such as love and life itself are undervalued and readily available, while money, which is often prioritized, is depicted as scarce and worthy of hard work. This statement reflects a critique of societal values that emphasize material wealth over the intrinsic worth of personal relationships and experiences.
Themes
LoveMoneyLifeWorkValue
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the true sources of happiness.
More from John Dos Passos
All quotes βAnything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.
John Dos PassosRead
Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older.
John Dos PassosRead
There's something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.
John Dos PassosRead
The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs
John Dos PassosRead
U.S.A. is the speech of the people
John Dos PassosRead
Similar quotes
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
Thomas HobbesRead
What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
Carlos FuentesRead
Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims - not excuse it, but expect it. And that's happened because you have an Islamophobia industry in this country devoted to making Americans think there's an enemy within.
Reza AslanRead
I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worthy nor such a one as that he should grant this to me, since I know most surely that poverty and affliction become me better than delights and riches.
Saint PatrickRead
One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: βLiving and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
HeraclitusRead