I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country where industrialism and finance and science flourish and the only arts that are vital and respected are architecture and the film, I have a considerable complaint.
SINCLAIR LEWISAnd 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.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.
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In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
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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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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.
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Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
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But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.
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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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If travel were so inspiring and informing a business … then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
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There are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don’t wish to do.
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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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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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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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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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She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
SINCLAIR LEWIS






