Quotes from Sinclair Lewis

Is it just possible,' he sighed, 'that the most vigorous and obldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators?

Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again.

Louis was altogether convinced that if the ignorant politicians would keep their dirty hands off banking and the stock exchange and hours of labor for salesmen in department stores, then everyone in the country would profit, as beneficiaries of increased business, and all of them (including the retail clerks) be rich as Aga Khan.

Why, America's the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country's too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn't happen here!

With all his amateurish fumbling, Martin had one characteristic without which there can be no science: a wide-ranging, sniffing, snuffling, undignified, unselfdramatizing curiosity, and it drove him on.

We ought to keep all these foreigners out of the country, and what I mean, the Kikes just as much as the Wops and Hunkies and Chinks.

The gospel crew could never consider their converts as human beings, like waiters or manicurists or brakemen, but they had in them such a professional interest as surgeons take in patients, critics in an author, fishermen in trout.

Pictures? Why talk stupidly about pictures when he could talk intelligently about engines? Languages? If he had nothing to say, what was the good of saying it in three languages? Manners? These presumable dukes and dignitaries whom he was passing on Pall Mall might be able to enter a throne-room more loftily, but he didn't want to enter a throne-room.

and we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don't want on a bet!) to put some starch and git into these marionettes we call our children?

He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain—unrighteous violence in a righteous cause.

West of Chicago, You bet means Rather, and Yes indeed, and On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion, and You're a liar but I can't afford to say so.

Is it just possible,' he sighed, 'that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators?

Humor is next to Godliness.

As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests-he has a jest.

And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.'s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

He had never found that more than five whiskeys and soda were beneficial to law-practice.

I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound. - Carol Kennicott

Yet all this while the power of thought, the pull of conscience, were feeble beside Alverna's youth. It was his first love; the first time in his life that he had been roused to through away caution and dignity.

Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism

You poor kids! You talking children, that don't know anything about anything that matters! Don't you see? I can't play either of your games. I'm ME! I'm going to be me! Oh, if you do love me a little, let me be me! Good-by.

Have men and women always got to hurt each other this way?' cried Ralph. 'Yes. Anybody that ain't content with being a peddler is going to hurt himself and everybody else, I guess,' said Joe.

With the loneliness of one who has put away a possible love Carol saw that he was a stranger. She saw that he had never been anything but a frame on which she had hung shining garments.

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.

He even got used to living in a lack of privacy like that of a monkey in a Zoo. After a time he could without self-consciousness sit and read the Paris editions