Is Shakespeare Dead? / From My Autobiography

ions of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my dignity. The furthest I can go in that direction is to call them by names of limited reverence-names merely descr

t is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot call to mind a single instan

condition of irreverence t

ma, and Chrishna, and his other gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within

her sly idea miscarried: for by the simple process of spelling his deities with capitals the Hindu confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making it

by everybody else; 2, whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3, therefore,

ng and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the only ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be re

do it, and that is, to stop the spread of the privilege, and strictly confine it to its present limits: that is, to all

he Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics hold sacred; then both of

eeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn from all the sects but me. Then there wil

ence no longer, because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seven