01c. 1918 ADThe Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
02c. 1918 ADI was feeling rational and restless, which is horrible for watching moviesSinclair Lewis / quote ↗
03c. 1918 ADIt is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
04c. 1918 ADWhen Buzz gets in, he won't be having any parade of wounded soldiers. That'll be bad Fascist psychology. All those poor devils he'll hide away in institutions, and just bring out the lively young human slaughter cattle in uniforms.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
05c. 1918 ADLike every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, "My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
06c. 1918 ADThere’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
07c. 1918 ADIn a matter of weeks, he had learned that without suffering and doubt, there can be no whole human being.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
08c. 1918 ADWell, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
09c. 1918 ADI came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound." - Carol KennicottSinclair Lewis / quote ↗
10c. 1918 ADThe fact that none of these civic worriers had ever heard of such a case was unimportant, because they all had heard of somebody who had heard of it!Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
11c. 1918 ADOh, quit it! You're the possessor of a beautiful wife, a beautiful gas-stove, and you were going to forget all this race-hysteria.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
12c. 1918 ADIt is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
13c. 1918 ADIf travel were so inspiring and informing a business...then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers, Pullman porters, and Mormon missionaries.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
14c. 1918 ADAdvertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
15c. 1918 AD- What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and what is it? Float on flowery beds of ease? Think Man was just made to be happy?- Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for!- Well, we know not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a... well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?- Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, 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 / quote ↗
16c. 1918 ADYou're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
17c. 1918 ADBabbit was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
18c. 1918 ADWell, he'd get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He'd take the first text he turned to and talk on that.He opened on: 'Now THEREFORE, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which ARE beyond the river, be ye far from thence,' an injunction spirited but not at present helpful.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
19c. 1918 ADWhatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
20c. 1918 ADThus 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 / quote ↗
23c. 1918 ADAnd though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on 'Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt' had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
24c. 1918 ADIs it just possible that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? Possible that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on savings them?Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
