There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
-- Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962
-- Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962
An internet search for the book "The Lonely Life" left me disappointed, so I can't give you any background imformation as to what the book was about. Most likely an autobiography of some sort. She was an actress and I don't care to go into any great detail on her life, but rather her words here.
Her first sentence here is my thesis. Excuses as to why things aren't wrong. The greatest example I can think of is the infamous "white lie." At what point, I wonder, did we decide that we could justify dishonesty on the grounds that it spared someone's feelings or didn't really hurt anyone. What great judges are we human beings that we can stretch morality like clay until we shape it into the beautifully decieving, self-flattering we've made it. The truth is there is a black and there is a white. There is a hot and there is a cold. It's only the discernment of which is which that should be hazy. There is no question, once you've properly seperated the two, as to whether or not there are exceptions to these solid principles.
I'm with Bette on this one. Give me the days where I'm either with you or against you. Bring me back to the times before hypocrisy if there ever was such a time. Show me a fork in the road and let me either choose the wide and wrong or the narrow and honorable. Most importantly let me shy from excuses and take my title with relish or reform in mind.
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