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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

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

Being Blue Country Human Literature Palin Professor Something True University
My objection to the church isn’t that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too .
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Actual Church Cruel Hypocritical Objective Peacher Some Them Through Wick
In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn’t the initial cost, it’s the humidity.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Cost Fact Humidity Initial Prohibition Thing Whole
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

Bounce Custom Fight Find Get Irritation Pack Through Ticket Train Wash
You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Earn Essential Immortal Morality Must Think Underneath
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

Business Deck Hand Information Inspire Steamer Tramp Travel Wise World
Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

City Power Reclaim Vast Wander
Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Occupation Season Winter
The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, “The trouble with this country is….”
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Country Many People Say Trouble
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

Divine Doom Grace Hell Most Rose Think When
Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Astonishingly Complicated Easy Great Hard Life Make No One Reform
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 LEWIS

Altogether Aspire Chief Country Ignorance Paint Pure Standardize Succeed Take Victorian Village
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Detail Dis Mind never Quit Reves She Throughness Understand Work
Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Absurd Become Contentment Could Doubt Misery Regain Whatever World
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Always Business Fine General Large Meaningless Relate Romance Term
He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Detest Fear Just Love Much People Person
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Audience Author Come Funnier Hope Largely Lecture Raed See
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

Do Industrious Iron Lazy Man Mayne Middle Pay Soul War Weel
We’d get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

All Cookies Ever May Sick Sicker Too
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

Century Civilization Country Dedicate Impossible Inspiration Itself Salesman Suire Traveling Wisdom
Sleep with me sleep with my dogs-
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Dog My Sleep With
Indians, of course, have no “theology,” and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Arrange Country Course Cruelty God Indeed Must Priest System Theology
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Experience Gone Great Heart Honest Income Maybe Money Perhaps Propaganda Tax Union
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Become Enemy Friend Liability More Quater Reasonable Turn Tyranny Under
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

Age Hit Less Need Old People Person Tragedy Upon Vigorous Youth
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Admit Believe Bust Dearth Eternity Fun Life Loyal More Nice Possible Sometimes
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

Adult Children Death Everything Kill Play Preparation Ridden Rule Spirit Time

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

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Popular Authors

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