I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.
How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world,--you must have noticed them in the street,--how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?
Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.
There's not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half
shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the
shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves.
Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.
Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.
The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.