Sinclair Lewis

“אני חושב שאולי אנו רוצים להיות מודעים יותר לחיים.”

“There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.”

“Well, he'd get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He'd take the first text he turned to and talk on that.He opened on: 'Now THEREFORE, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which ARE beyond the river, be ye far from thence,' an injunction spirited but not at present helpful.”

“He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.”

“People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'”

“Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.”

“When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.”

“- What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and what is it? Float on flowery beds of ease? Think Man was just made to be happy?- Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for!- Well, we know not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a... well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?- Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.”

“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”

“Well, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?”

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.”

“What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.”

“The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.”

“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”

“The fact that none of these civic worriers had ever heard of such a case was unimportant, because they all had heard of somebody who had heard of it!”

“Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, "My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war.”

“Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.”

“Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.”

“There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!”

“Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth...”