/lit/ - Literature

>>22834657
>>22834795
An age when a man cannot speak the plain truth, cannot let loose the burning speech within him, without a pedant leaping out from the shadow, to strike down this word, that particle of speech, that stray syllable, as flawed - is that an age for men? It seems rather another age! That the force of truth, of flowing feeling, may overflow the banks of propriety, should this surprise us? Better rather to attend to the principal force, and judge it not as pedants, but as fellow men, according as it is truth or falsity! Falsity may appear in the properest clothes. Louis XV may be powdered and puffed, may wave at a false realm from the most gilded carriage. The Papal Bull sent in vain to silence brave Luther, who would not be silenced - I do not doubt it was scribed with the utmost nicety, in the most elegant script of Rome. And did Luther judge it by the justness of its prepositions? Nay - by some other quality, I should think! By the manifest falseness no right diction could mask.