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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

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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
World
People
Eager
Provided
Wish
Done
Many
Things

More quotes by Sinclair Lewis

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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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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
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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.
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Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
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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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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.
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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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If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.
Sinclair Lewis
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There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it.
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A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
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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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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
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In everything was the spirit of children's play - not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.
Sinclair Lewis
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Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
Sinclair Lewis
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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
Sinclair Lewis
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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
Sinclair Lewis
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You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
Sinclair Lewis
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It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
Sinclair Lewis