Edward Dahlberg
Edward Dahlberg
Edward Dahlbergwas an American novelist, essayist and autobiographer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 July 1900
heart self comfort
The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.
love men machines
The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.
writing evil sin
We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.
book funeral heaven
Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.
men silence criticism
Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.
country war ruins
No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.
loneliness cat house
One cat in a house is a sign of loneliness.
writing men luck
What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
money men idols
There is a strange and mighty race of people called the Americans who are rapidly becoming the coldest in the world because of this cruel, man-eating idol, lucre.
technology talking rivers
We are always talking about being together, and yet whatever we invent destroys the family, and makes us wild, touchless beasts feeding on technicolor prairies and rivers.
business mistake optimistic
Every decision you make is a mistake.
uplifting mistake moving-forward
Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. Walt Disney Every decision you make is a mistake.
cities people solitude
We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.
men evil sage
Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.