Quote

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
Work
Natural
Remembered
Long
Keep
Ideals
Things
Truth
Greatness
Remember
Standards
Doe
Trouble
Come
Beauty
Even
Working
Trying
Knowledge
Faithful

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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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How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?
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The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
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It is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.
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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.
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It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.
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Out of the fragrant heart of bloom, The bobolinks are singing Out of the fragrant heart of bloom The apple-tree whispers to the room, Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
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What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.
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Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.
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Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
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You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.
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There will presently be no room in the world for things it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.
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The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
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The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.
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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.
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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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The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.
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He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
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Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.
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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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