In intertwining sentimentality, healing, narcissism, and authority, modern evangelicals give authority to those emotions themselves...The sentimental becomes evidence and authority in a world in which most evangelicals have given up intellectual pursuits and concerns over doctrine. Essentially, sentimentality represents an abandonment of theology and critical introspection in popular evangelicalism. Instead of crafting intellectual responses to the challenges to evangelicalism, popular evangelicals appeal to the power of feeling as an authority to counteract science and criticism of the Bible. They offer their audiences the opportunity to FEEL that evangelicalism is right rather than asking them to accept the veracity of doctrinal positions of evangelicalism.

- Todd M. Brenneman, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

Our sentimentality toward animals is a sure sign of the disdain in which we hold them. Sentimentality is nothing but the infinitely degraded form of bestiality, the racist commiseration.

- Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

One of Sir Topher's rules was to never indulge in sentimentality, never return for what was left behind.

- Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock

I think the main function of contemporary irony is to protect thespeaker from being interpreted as naive or sentimental.

- David Foster Wallace

A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey.The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial"......the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire.

- Jimmy Webb, Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting

High culture is paranoid about sentiment, but human beings are intensely sentimental. And if art doesn’t speak language that’s acceptable to people, it relegates itself to obscurity.

- Thomas Kinkade

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

- نجيب محفوظ, Sugar Street

Sentimentality was used because other political avenues were closed, and authors hoped that through it they could bring about a political change that would fulfill the egalitarian promises of the Revolution. Real political venues were unavailable, so fiction became a medium for authors to appeal to audiences for change.

- Todd M. Brenneman, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romanticperson has a desperate confidence that they won't.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

I was firmly in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind camp, and had cogent, unflinchingly honest declarations I frequently made about losing a shared context, and sentimentalism, and the general faint hearted ness of most people-but I knew there were people in the world who remained friends, for life, with bunk mates from sleepaway camp, and this was that group of people.

- Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef