And that the pastor’s sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which ‘did a fellow good– kept him in touch with Higher Things.
SINCLAIR LEWISAs 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.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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You have more people that love you than you know.
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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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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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God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
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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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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
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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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Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies.
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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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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People read fiction for emotion-not information
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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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When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
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I love America, but I don’t like it.
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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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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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I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.
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Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.
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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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Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.
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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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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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS