Sinclair Lewis Quotes

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.”

“There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”

“We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.”

“Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.”

“It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the old friends who never were friends.”

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”

“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”

“The 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.”

“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”

“He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.”

“It isn't what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class.”

“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.”

“Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.”