William Dean Howells quotes

William Dean Howells was an American novelist, literary critic, and editor, often called the "Dean of American Letters." His works played a crucial role in popularizing realism in American literature. He championed new writers and helped shape literary tastes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here are 36 of his quotes:

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

William Dean Howells

He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.

William Dean Howells

The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.

William Dean Howells

See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion; See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious.

William Dean Howells

An artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.

William Dean Howells

Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?

William Dean Howells

The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.

William Dean Howells

We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.

William Dean Howells

Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

William Dean Howells

Lord, for the erring thought Not into evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will Betrayed and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, Our thanksgiving accept.

William Dean Howells

A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.

William Dean Howells

Her mouth is a honey-blossom, No doubt, as the poet sings; But within her lips, the petals, Lurks a cruel bee that stings.

William Dean Howells

And before you know me gone Eternity and I are one.

William Dean Howells

We live, but a world has passed away With the years that perished to make us men.

William Dean Howells

I am not sorry for having wrought in common, crude material so much; that is the right American stuff; and perhaps hereafter, when my din is done, if anyone is curious to know what that noise was, it will be found to have proceeded from a small insect which was scraping about on the surface of our life and trying to get into its meaning for the sake of the other insects larger or smaller. That is, such has been my unconscious work; consciously, I was always, as I still am, trying to fashion a piece of literature out of the life next at hand.

William Dean Howells

Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.

William Dean Howells

It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.

William Dean Howells

You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

William Dean Howells

Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.

William Dean Howells

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.

William Dean Howells

How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?

William Dean Howells

Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.

William Dean Howells