Quote

Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.

Theodore Dreiser

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Theodore Dreiser
Age: 74 †
Born: 1871
Born: August 27
Died: 1945
Died: December 28
Autobiographer
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Terre Haute
Indiana
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
None
Weak
Desire
Strong
Made
Life
Mercy
Tragedy

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We who feel that justice is not being done have but one thing to do: that is fight, by argument, by example, by insistence on fair play wherever we have the power to do so. The rest is in the hands of the Lord, or nature, which swings, apparently, from one extreme to another.
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I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.
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When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse
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If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.
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The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.
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A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.
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You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It's chemical. What are you going to do about it?
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And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must succeed. That's what the world was made for. That's what he was made for. That was what he would have to do.
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How dismal is progress without publicity.
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Your writer, your scientist, your chief official, all have lost the power to revive the early illusion concerning fame and high place. Their beauty and delight is like the mirage in the heavens, only plain to the eye outside within is nothing.
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Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
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Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
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I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
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Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain.
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Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.
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If we are to extract any joy out of our span, we must think and plan and make things better not only for ourselves but for others, since joy for ourselves depends upon our joy in others and theirs in us.
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I believe in the compelling power of love.
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