Theodore Winthrop

“ I find that brutality interferes in most dramas and most lives. Brutality the male sin, disloyalty the female sin, — these two are always doing their best to baffle and blight heroism and purity. Often they succeed. Oftener they fail. And so the world exists, and is not annulled ”

“ But soberly, old fellow, I need peace after a life driven into premature foemanship. I need tranquillity to let my character use my facts. I want the bitter drawn out of me, and the sweet fostered. I yearn to be a lover.”
As he said this, we had approached the camp-fire. Jim Robinson, by this time quite at home, was making his accomplishments of use. He was debasing his audience with a vulgar song. The words and air jarred upon both of us.
“Nil humani a me alienum puto, I repeat,” said Brent, “but that foul stuff is not the voice of humanity. Let’s go look at the horses. ”

“ All men and all women who make prey of their fellows, who lie in wait to seize and dismember brothers and sisters, get this same relentless expression. It fixes itself deepest on a gambler; he must hold the same countenance from the first lamp-lighting until indignant dawn pales the sickly light of lamps, and the first morning air creeps in to stir the heavy-hearted atmosphere, and show that it is poison.
“I’ve seen villains just like those two,” said Brent, “in every hell in Europe and America. They always go in pairs; a tiger and a snake ”

“ Young and beautiful faces curdle into it. Women’s even. I have seen women, the slaves of the hells their devils kept, whose faces would have been fair and young, if this ugly mask could but be torn away. ”

“ The world went through an epoch of just such life as we are leading. Every man must, to be complete and not conventional.”
“A man who wants to know his country and his age must clash with all the people and all the kinds of life in it. ”

“ They do not belie their nobler nature, and are not in the line of degradation. I cannot harden myself not to shrink from the brutal element wherever I find it; whether in two horse-thieves on the plains, or in a well-dressed reprobate of society at the club in New York.”
“Brutes in civilization are just as base, but not so blatant.” ”