Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Sinclair Lewis
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Safe
Protest
Pulitzer
Upon
Propaganda
Declined
Art
Prize
Sterile
Become
Arts
Institute
Must
Letters
Obedient
Every
Election
Compulsion
Years
Writers
Polite
National
Decline
More quotes by Sinclair Lewis
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
Sinclair Lewis
Indians, of course, have no theology, and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
Sinclair Lewis
Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
Sinclair Lewis
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.
Sinclair Lewis
Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
Sinclair Lewis
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.
Sinclair Lewis
There are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don't wish to do.
Sinclair Lewis
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
Sinclair Lewis
Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
Sinclair Lewis
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
Sinclair Lewis
What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament!
Sinclair Lewis
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
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
When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
Sinclair Lewis
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
Life is hard and astonishingly complicated.... No one great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work -- or want to work -- will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy.
Sinclair Lewis
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
It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
Sinclair Lewis
Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
Sinclair Lewis
There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
Sinclair Lewis