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Sinclair Lewis Quotes | Quotes said by Sinclair Lewis

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #1

    - 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 #2

    Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #3

    And 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 #4

    Babbit 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 #5

    He was in stature but a small man, yet remember that so were Napoleon, Lord Beaverbrook, Stephen A. Douglas, Frederick the Great, and the Dr. Goebbels who is privily known throughout Germany as Wotan's Mickey Mouse.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #6

    I 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 Kennicott

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #7

    I was feeling rational and restless, which is horrible for watching movies

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #8

    If a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares, and attendant British journalists rejoice, 'You see: the American Cousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are.'

    But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. they want to see one queen, once, and if another came to town next week, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw more than two small boys and an Anglophile.

    Americans want to see one movie star, one giraffe, one jet plance, one murder, but only one. They run up a skyscraper or the fame of generals and evangelists and playwrights in one week and tear them all down in an hour, and the mark of excellence everywhere is 'under new management'.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #9

    If 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 #10

    Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #11

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

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #12

    It 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 #13

    It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor out to the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rachmaninoff better, nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #14

    NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #15

    People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #16

    Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #17

    So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #18

    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.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #19

    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.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #20

    The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ideas almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
    Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #21

    There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #22

    There’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 #23

    Thus 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 #24

    Well, 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 #25

    Well, 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 #26

    What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #27

    Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #28

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

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #29

    When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.

  • Sinclair Lewis Quote #30

    Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry.

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