I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I like a whore of my soul. Selling his soul. Because in whore he personifies it. Well, the word whore .
People don t go around writing whore or, in public, saying whore.
And now you know why you like what you like. You re way ahead of the game, Nathan. And you know it because you looked at one word he used, just one word, and you thought about that word he used, and you asked yourself some questions about that word he used, until you saw right through that word, saw through it as though through a magnifying glass, to one of the sources of this great writer s power. He is audacious. Thomas Paine is audacious.