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.
SINCLAIR LEWISThink of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.
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We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!
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Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics!
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Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
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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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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.
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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.
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Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry.
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She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
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I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence.
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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
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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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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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Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
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You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
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Paris is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities.
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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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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
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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.
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Don’t be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.
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I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We’re tired of drudging and sleeping and dying.
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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As 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.
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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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Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.
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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