Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Writer
Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
World
Funny
Pays
War
Ems
Wells
Opera
Well
Singers
Needs
Shoes
Much
Praise
Shoemakers
Good
Pay
Starves
Always
Fiction
Praises

More quotes by Sinclair Lewis

Image
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest it is an industry.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
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
Image
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.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
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
Image
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
You, Said Dr. Yavitch, are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.
Sinclair Lewis
Image
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