"In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the humidity."
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Quote collection
Sinclair Lewis quotes (page 5 of 6)
102 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry."
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"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."
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"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."
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"That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men."
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"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."
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"Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd."
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"It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends."
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"Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?"
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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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"The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. ... He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. —chapter 8"
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"What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?"
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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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"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.""
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"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?"
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"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize."
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"Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist."
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"I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me - I actually took my teachers seriously!"
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"If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil."
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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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