Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by.
SINCLAIR LEWISEvery compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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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
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, ’tain’t any laughing matter!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Sleep with me sleep with my dogs-
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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Don’t be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.
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It is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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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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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS