Explore Quotes by Sinclair Lewis

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.

Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.

Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.

It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.

People will buy anything that is one to a customer.

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.

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.

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.

What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament!

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.

She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.