Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
SINCLAIR LEWISWe’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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People read fiction for emotion-not information
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Upon 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.
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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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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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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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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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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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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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God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
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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.
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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
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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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In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
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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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Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
SINCLAIR LEWIS