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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

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

Basketball Bbbit Call Clan Custom Game Gave Homicidal Instinct Outlet Patriotism Side
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
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
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Being Contrive Four Greatest Hour Human Manner Mystery Praise Put Reaction Sex Twenty
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

Beebm Accomplish Convenience Critical Everything Free Important Preservation Social Spirit System While World Worth
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
We’re tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We’re tired of always deferring hope till the next generation.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Always Conscious Deferring Generation Hope Life More Next Perhaps Think Tired Want
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
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
Think of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Aron Arrest Case Country Fourteen Girl Many Murderer Orphanage People Seduce Sell Stock Thin Year
Writing is just work-there’s no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Dictate Method Pen Secret Type Use Work Writing
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Art Attic Booze Burn Businessmen Country Feeding Indistinguishable Left Literature Live Other Shabby Spaghetti Successful
Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life’s dark clouds.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Can Cloud Dark Enough Hing Life Lighten Love One Really Say Sure
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

Critical Given Gossip Protect Sensitiveness Unhappy Women
There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.
SINCLAIR LEWIS

Country Dozen Fictioneer Insane May Most People Person Poet Tradition Young
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

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

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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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Popular Authors

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