Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
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Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
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Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness.
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There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.
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Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
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A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
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Do you think it's so snobbish, to want to see something besides one's fellow citizens abroad?
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He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
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Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
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You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.
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He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
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Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
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I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me - I actually took my teachers seriously!
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In everything was the spirit of children's play - not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.
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The one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.
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When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.
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She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
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To a true-blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead.
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Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry.
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There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.
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You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-'fess up! With your great experience, don't you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps-just maybe-when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes, so that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne'er-do-weels, then maybe, to save their lazy souls and get some iron into them, a war might be a good thing? Come on, now, tell your real middle name, Mong General!
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The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. ... He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. —chapter 8
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Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.
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Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
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What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament!
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Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.
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Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.
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I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country where industrialism and finance and science flourish and the only arts that are vital and respected are architecture and the film, I have a considerable complaint.
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Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
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His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
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