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.
SINCLAIR LEWISI 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.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?
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We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!
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When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
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There are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don’t wish to do.
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The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
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I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity
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You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
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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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Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
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A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
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Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.
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I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want — and what I want now is a drink.
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It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.
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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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Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics!
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Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.
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I love America, but I don’t like it.
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When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism
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If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows.
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A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth.
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Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by.
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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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Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities.
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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.
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An it isn’t so much that the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires – though a lot of churches are that, too.
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One quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.
SINCLAIR LEWIS