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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.

Sinclair Lewis

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Sinclair Lewis
Journalist
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Sauk Centre
Minnesota
Harry Sinclair Lewis
Much
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More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
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What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
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Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
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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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. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
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When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.
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You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
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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
Sinclair Lewis
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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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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
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
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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.
Sinclair Lewis
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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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Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.
Sinclair Lewis