Quotes from Theodore Dreiser

all beauty were passing, and you were given these things to hold in your arms before the world slipped away, would you give them up?

Well, here is one who, whatever her defects, probably does what she believes as nearly as possible.

Now that Carrie had come, he was in a fair way to be blissful again.

It is a curious characteristic of the non-defensive disposition that it is like a honey-jar to flies. Nothing is brought to it and much is taken away.

girl like Jennie is like a comfortable fire to the average masculine mind; they gravitate to it, seek its sympathy, yearn to possess it. Hence she was annoyed by many unwelcome attentions.

In Chicago the two roads to distinction were politics and trade. In New York the roads were any one of a half-hundred, and each had been diligently pursued by hundreds, so that celebrities were numerous. The sea was already full of whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view — remain unseen. In other words, Hurstwood was nothing.

And so another miserable, black and weary night. And then another miserable gray and wintry morning.

Jennie went about her work, but the impression persisted; his name ran in her mind. Lester Kane. And he was from Cincinnati.

When we are cast from a group or a condition we have still the companionship of all that is. Nature is not ungenerous. Its winds and stars are fellows with you. Let the soul be but gentle and receptive, and this vast truth will come home — not in set phrases, perhaps, but as a feeling, a comfort, which, after all, is the last essence of knowledge. In the universe peace is wisdom.

She looked at him now and then on the sly, and felt, for the first time in her life, an interest in a man on his own account. He was so big, so handsome, so forceful.

Although the whole earth, not we alone, is moved by passions hymeneal, and everything terrestrial has come into being by the one common road, yet there is that ridiculous tendency to close the eyes and turn away the head as if there were something unclean in nature itself. "Conceived in iniquity and born in sin," is the unnatural interpretation put upon the process by the extreme religionist, and the world, by its silence

Guards knew when blue devils had seized the inmates of these cages. They couldn't eat. And there were times, too, when even guards couldn't eat.

Jennie looked at him curiously. She scarcely understood what she was thinking, but this man drew her. If she had realized in what way she would have fled his presence then and there.

the practice of medicine in a large and kindly way had led him to the conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies and in our small neighborhood relationships.

Chapter I The Philadelphia into which Frank Algernon Cowperwood was born was a city of two hundred and fifty thousand and more. It was set with handsome parks, notable buildings, and crowded with historic memories. Many of the things that we and he knew later were not then in existence—the telegraph, telephone, express company, ocean steamer, city delivery of mails.

The world is always struggling to express itself. Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings. They depend upon others. That is what genius is for. One man expresses their desires for them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play. Sometimes nature does it in a face - it makes the face representative of all desire. That's what has happened in your case.

for he could feel their eager eyes and their eager words as clearly as he could hear their scratching pens. And all for the papers—his blanching face and trembling hands—they would have that down—and his mother in Denver and everybody else there in Lycurgus would see and read—how he had looked at the Aldens and they had looked at him and then he had looked away again.

You felt no sorrow? No shame? Then? Yes, shame, maybe. Maybe sorrow, too, a little. I knew it was terrible. I felt that it was, of course. But still—you see— Yes, I know. That Miss X. You wanted to get away. Yes—but mostly I was frightened, and I didn't want to help her. Yes! Yes! Tst! Tst! Tst! If she drowned you could go to that Miss X. You thought of that? The Reverend McMillan's lips were tightly and sadly compressed. Yes. My son! My son! In your heart was murder then.

How could they judge him, these people, all or any one of them, even his own mother, when they did not know what his own mental, physical and spiritual suffering had been? And

Clyde had a soul that was not destined to grow up. He lacked decidedly that mental clarity and inner directing application that in so many permits them to sort out from the facts and avenues of life the particular thing or things that make for their direct advancement.

Dusk—of a summer night.

Strange ambition. Strange perversion, one might almost say. In

as I go, like those others. I will not be here any more. He seemed to be going over each step in his mind—each step with which he was so familiar, only now, for the first time, he was living it for himself.

So they decided against me. Now I will have to go through that door after all,—like all those others. They'll draw the curtains for me, too. Into that other room—then back across the passage— saying good-bye as I go, like those others. I will not be here any more. He seemed to be going over each step in his mind—each step with which he was so familiar, only now, for the first time, he was living it for himself.