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Do not trouble yourselves about standards or ideals but try to be faithful and natural: remember that there is no greatness, no beauty, which does not come from truth to your own knowledge of things and keep on working, even if your work is not long remembered.

William Dean Howells

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William Dean Howells
Age: 83 †
Born: 1837
Born: March 1
Died: 1920
Died: May 11
Author
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Belmont County
Ohio
William Howells
Doe
Trouble
Come
Beauty
Even
Working
Trying
Knowledge
Faithful
Work
Natural
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Things
Truth
Greatness
Remember
Standards

More quotes by William Dean Howells

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The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect. Satan has a fine intellect, but not the image of God.
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In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.
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A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk, and only replies to the quality.
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A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.
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People naturally despise a dependant.
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The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
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I wonder why we hate the past so.
William Dean Howells
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If ever the public was betrayed by its press, it's ours.
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Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.
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If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.
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What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.
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The wars come and go in blood and tears but whether they are bad wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and sorrow.
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By beauty of course I mean truth, for the one involves the other it is only the false in art which is ugly, and it is only the ugly that is universal.
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I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from fine physical state. It cannot be brought. But it is the keenest joy, after all and the toiler's truest and best reward.
William Dean Howells
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Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
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The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.
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n artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.
William Dean Howells
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Lord, for the erring thoughtNot into evil wrought:Lord, for the wicked willBetrayed and baffled still:For the heart from itself kept,Our thanksgiving accept.
William Dean Howells
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We are creatures of the moment we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.
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Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
William Dean Howells