Quotes from Theodore Dreiser

A clever companion—had she ever had one—would have warned her never to look a man in the eyes so steadily.

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.

Cowperwood was shocked by the nudity of the Venus which conveyed an atmosphere of European freedom not common to America;

In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

Society possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things.

she was no common girl, no toy of the passing hour.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.

Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

In your rocking chair by your window shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye.

An American Tragedy.

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstances.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul.

Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.

When a man, however passively, becomes an obstacle to the fulfillment of a woman's desires, he becomes an odious thing in her eyes, - or will, given time enough.

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.

Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.