William Dean Howells

“I wish you to believe whatever you think is true, at any and every cost.”

“Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?”

“Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.”

“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.”

“Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.”

“The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.”

“Primitive societies without religion have never been found.”

“The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.”

“It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.”

“He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.”

“There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.”

“Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.”

“The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.”

“She had conquered, but she had also necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; but at any rate she had lost it.”

“Yes, there's sense in that. But the suddenly rich are on a level with any of us nowadays. Money buys position at once. I don't say that it isn't all right. The world generally knows what it's about, and knows how to drive a bargain. I dare say that it makes the new rich pay too much. But there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. It is the romance, the poetry of our age. It's the thing that chiefly strikes the imagination. The Englishmen who come here are more curious about the great new millionaires than about anyone else, and they respect them more. It's all very well. I don't complain of it.”

“A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.”

“Tomorrow I shall be sixty-nine, but I do not seem to care. I did not start the affair, and I have not been consulted about it at any step.”

“What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.”

“You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.”

“In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.”