Quotes from Theodore Dreiser

asked Carrie, surprised at her experience. Lots of them, said the girl; haven't you? This is my first experience. Oh, is it? I thought I saw you the time they ran 'The Queen's Mate' here. No, said Carrie, shaking her head; not me. This conversation was interrupted by the blare of the orchestra and the sputtering of the calcium lights in the wings as the line was called to form for a new entrance. No further opportunity for conversation occurred, but the next evening

Would no one ever understand—or give him credit for his human—if all too human and perhaps wrong hungers—yet from which so many others—along with himself suffered?

There is nothing in this world more delightful than that middle state in which we mentally balance at times, possessed of the means, lured by desire, and yet deterred by conscience or want of decision.

She loved him with that love which is the crowning mystery of the human brain and the human heart, that transcends in its strength and its weakness all fear of shame or punishment from even the immortal throne above.

What followed then was what invariably follows in the wake of every tortured consciousness. From what it dreads or hates, yet knows or feels to be unescapable, it takes refuge in that which may be hoped for—or at least imagined.

A real man—a financier—was never a tool. He used tools. He created. He led. Clearly

It was given unto you to know the Peace of God, he insisted, quoting Paul and thereafter sentences from Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, on how easy it was—if Clyde would but repeat and pray as he had asked him to—for him to know and delight in the peace that passeth all understanding.

Bergždžiausias pasaulyje dalykas - bandyti tiksliai apib?dinti žmog?. Kiekvienas individas yra priešingybi? kamuolys, o juo žmogus gabesnis, juo daugiau jame prieštaravim?.

And so you have the astounding and bitter spectacle, gentlemen, of a supposedly innocent and highly misunderstood young man dragging this weary and heart-sick girl from place to place, in order to find a lake deserted enough in which to drown her. And with her but four months from motherhood!

But, oh, gentlemen, the ways of nature, or of God, and the Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may! It is man who proposes, but God—God—who disposes!

His eyes expressed the difficulty he felt.

Never? That's a hard word when it comes to whisky.

Here was another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off Prince's Bay on Staten Island.

You have heard him called a man—a bearded man—a criminal and a crime-soaked product of the darkest vomiting of Hell.

you could no more see him in the light that you do than you could rise out of that box and fly through those windows.

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.

There's no explaining a good woman, he said to himself.

She wondered curiously where she would be when she died.

I know that as you gentlemen view such things, such conduct has no excuse for being. One may be the victim of an internal conflict between two illicit moods, yet nevertheless, as the law and the church see it, guilty of sin and crime. But the truth, none-the-less, is that they do exist in the human heart, law or no law, religion or no religion, and in scores of cases they motivate the actions of the victims. And we admit that they motivated the actions of Clyde Griffiths.

A lovely home atmosphere is one of the flowers of the world, than which there is nothing more tender, nothing more delicate, nothing more calculated to make strong and just the natures cradled and nourished within it.

Her sister carried with her most of the grimness of shift and toil.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.

A man, to hold his position, must have a dignified manner, a clean record, a respectable home anchorage.

To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar health is invariably fascinating. Next to love, it is the one thing which solaces and delights.