Sinclair Lewis Quotes

63 quotes in 863 categories

• In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the humidity.
• His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford…
• The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...."
• The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of…
• What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
• Do you think it's so snobbish, to want to see something besides one's fellow citizens abroad?
• In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in…
• You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-'fess up! With your great experience,…
• Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead.
• On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.
• A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
• I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with…
• Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
• What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.
• Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
• Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
• The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.
• Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
• When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.
• There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that…

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