In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
SINCLAIR LEWISUpon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.
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But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.
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The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.”
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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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She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
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If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows.
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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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if men and women would be human beings instead of just business men, or plumbers, or army officers, or commuters, or educators, or authors, or clubwomen, or traveling salesmen, or Socialists, or Republicans, or Salvation Army leaders, or wearers of cloths.
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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!
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We’re tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We’re tired of always deferring hope till the next generation.
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To be ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ or, in their own word, to be ‘highbrow,’ is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.
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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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Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure–wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.
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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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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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People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
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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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In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
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What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much – and like so well?
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Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
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On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.
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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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You have more people that love you than you know.
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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
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It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.
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I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want — and what I want now is a drink.
SINCLAIR LEWIS