William Dean Howells Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

William Dean Howells
A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.

William Dean Howells
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.

William Dean Howells
Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?

William Dean Howells
Those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them are ruinous!

William Dean Howells
You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

William Dean Howells
Her mouth is a honey-blossom,
No doubt, as the poet sings;
But within her lips, the petals,
Lurks a cruel bee that stings.

William Dean Howells
There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

William Dean Howells
Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests.

William Dean Howells
We invite our novelists... to concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American.

William Dean Howells
What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.

William Dean Howells
See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion;
See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious.

William Dean Howells
All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

William Dean Howells
The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

William Dean Howells