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.
SINCLAIR LEWISWriters kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
-
-
You,” Said Dr. Yavitch, “are a middle-road liberal, and you haven’t the slightest idea what you want.
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 -
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 -
Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it,
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It’s one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.
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 -
The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, “The trouble with this country is….”
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn’t a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me – I actually took my teachers seriously!
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
The one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much – and like so well?
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.
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 -
Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
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 -
On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities.
SINCLAIR LEWIS -
It isn’t what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
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