Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewiswas an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American capitalism and materialism between the wars. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 February 1885
CitySauk Centre, MN
CountryUnited States of America
Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
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.
When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, 'tain't any laughing matter!
Do you think it's so snobbish, to want to see something besides one's fellow citizens abroad?
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.
. . . she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them . . .
There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.
When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.
a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus Ward.
. . . being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.
The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.