Sinclair Lewis - Life Quotes

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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.

Sinclair Lewis
Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first sight the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.

Sinclair Lewis
In the study of the profession to which he had looked forward all his life he found irritation and vacuity as well as serene wisdom; he saw no one clear path to Truth but a thousand paths to a thousand truths far-off and doubtful.

Sinclair Lewis
She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.

Sinclair Lewis
I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know's I've accomplished anything except just get along.

Sinclair Lewis
I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries.

Sinclair Lewis
Organic chemistry! Puzzle chemistry! Stink chemistry! Drug-store chemistry! Physical chemistry is power, it is exactness, it is life.

Sinclair Lewis
In everything was the spirit of children's play - not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.

Sinclair Lewis
Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.

Sinclair Lewis