Sinclair Lewis quotes - page 6

I've sat at the preachers' feet and listened to them, faithfully, and tried to make myself become what they said I ought to be. I'm through! I do my own thinking now and my own bossing. (Sinclair Lewis)
An ugly woodshed that's there, right on the ground, is handsomer to me than a ten-story temple that isn't there. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious-he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith. He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! View quote
Sinclair Lewis
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
What is love? It is the morning and the evening star. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me-oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
It did seem sounder to build houses which he could build than to teach children a gospel which he did not altogether understand in a Sioux language which he could not quite speak. (Sinclair Lewis)
What is Love-the divine Love of which the-the great singer teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow that comes after the dark cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest stars we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still around the quiet tomb. What is it inspires all great men-be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed is music but the voice of Love!" View quote
Sinclair Lewis
What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now - and we're going to try our hands at it. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced - there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. And, much harder to endure than any raging condemnation, a certain number of old acquaintances among journalists, what in the galloping American slang we call the "I Knew Him When Club", have scribbled that since they know me personally, therefore I must be a rather low sort of fellow and certainly no writer. But if I have now and then received such cheering brickbats, still I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be fatuous not to expect a fair number in return. View quote
Sinclair Lewis
He fretted that he did not know anything. He sighed, 'I have sought the Kingdom of God a little, the Squire has sought it terribly, but we haven't even a map, and after what I saw this afternoon, I know the Sioux are as barbarous as we are. Is it possible that nobody has ever known-that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years? ~ Ch. 33. (Sinclair Lewis)