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 LEWISIntellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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If travel were so inspiring and informing a business … then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?
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!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
I’ve heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I’ve never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.
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His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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.”
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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 LEWIS -
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much – and like so well?
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It isn’t what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
In everything was the spirit of children’s play – not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Most of us who work — or want to work — will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.
SINCLAIR LEWIS