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Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.

— James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son (1955)

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More quotes by James Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Notes of a Native Son (1955)

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Baldwin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.