Quotes from William Dean Howells

The wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and sorrow.

The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.

If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.

The action is best that secures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

That time of year, you know, when the summer, beginning to sadden, Full-mooned and silver-misted, glides from the heart of September, Mourned by desolate crickets, and iterant grasshoppers, crying All the still nights long, from the ripened abundance of gardens...

Live all you can. It's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do -- but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so -- and now I'm old. It's too late. It has gone past me -- I've lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!

Some people stay longer in an hour than others do in a month.

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

Each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world.

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

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences.

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.

How strange it (the earthquake) must all have seemed to them, here where they lived so safely always! They thought such a dreadful thing could happen to others, but not to them. That is the way!

The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious.

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.

We can trace the operation of evil in the physical world…but I am more and more puzzled about it in the moral world. There its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems to involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatsoever.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...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.

People naturally despise a dependant.

I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The black truth, which we all know ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront? Even you [Mark Twain] won't tell the black heart's-truth. The man who could do it would be famed to the last day the sun shown upon.

It's very odd...that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate--all those values shrink abominably.

No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know I've always contended that the affections could be made to combine pleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,--that would be rather bad,--but I don't see why, when it comes to falling in love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should

It was not a particularly sane spectacle, that impatience to be off to some place that lay not only in the distance, but also in the future — to which no line of road carries you with absolute certainty across an interval of time full of every imaginable chance and influence. It is easy enough to buy a ticket to Cincinnati, but it is somewhat harder to arrive there. Say that all goes well, is it exactly you who arrive?

New York may be splendidly gay or squalidly gay but prince or pauper, it's gay always...Yes, gay is the word...but frantic. I can't get used to it. They forget death, Basil; they forget death in New York.