Noble sentiments are not the fashion.

The very phrase provokes a smile of ridicule.

But I do not know whether the habit of uttering ignoble ones in "chaff" does not at last bring the tone of mind down to the low level.

It is so terribly easy to be mean, and covetous, and selfish, and cowardly untrue, if the people by whose good opinion one's character lives will comfortably confess that they also "look out for themselves," and "take care of Number One," and think "money's the great thing in this world," and hold "the social lie" to be a necessary part of social intercourse.

I know that once or twice it has happened that young people with whom we have been thrown have said things which have made high-principled Eleanor stand aghast in honourable horror; and that that speechless indignation of hers has been as much lost upon them as the touch of a feather on the hide of a rhinoceros.