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

Sinclair Lewis

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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Courage
Form

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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
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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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Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.
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I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.
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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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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.
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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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There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
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What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
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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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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
Sinclair Lewis
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When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism
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Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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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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Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
Sinclair Lewis
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Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
Sinclair Lewis
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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.
Sinclair Lewis