You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news.
But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age isworth a fit of insanity, is it not?
Oh for someone with a heart, head and hand. Whatever they call them, what do I care, aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, just be it one that can rule and dare not lie.
I firmly believe that the only reason why I'm on this planet, the only reason why I live, breathe, and exist is, that it's my duty to be as honest as possible in my art.
The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.