Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the superficial joy and measured happiness portrayed by executives, suggesting a disdain for inauthenticity.
Sinclair Lewis's quote expresses a strong disapproval of the disingenuous attitudes often exhibited by powerful figures in society, particularly executives, who present themselves with calculated joy and satisfaction while lacking genuine emotion. It calls into question the authenticity of their happiness and implies that such measured merriment is a facade, indicating a deeper critique of societal norms that value appearance over sincerity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on corporate culture and the importance of genuine leadership.
Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters.
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
Tota vita nihil aliud quam ad mortem iter est._x000D_ _x000D_ The whole of life is nothing but a journey to death.
It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.
How everything you ever love will reject you or die. Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you're proud of will end up as trash.
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