66 quotes
It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.
Main Street (1920)
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man.
Babbitt (1922)
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.
It Can't Happen Here (1935)
He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.
Elmer Gantry (1927)
The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. ~ Ch. 1 [first sentence]
Babbitt (1922)
She was not a Respectable Married Woman but fully a human being.
Main Street (1920)
I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence. ~ Ch. 59
The God-Seeker (1949)
Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. ~ Ch. 6
Babbitt (1922)
It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends. ~ Ch. 20
Arrowsmith (1925)
Mr. Wilkins came back and hemmed and hawed a good deal; he praised the work she hadn't considered well done, and pointed out faults in what she considered particularly clever achievements.
The Job (1917)
He was still not at all certain that he was doing any good, aside from providing the drug of religious hope to timorous folk frightened of hell-fire and afraid to walk alone.
Elmer Gantry (1927)
Everything seemed confused and contradictory, and he longed for one clear command from a divine martinet. ~ Ch. 7
The God-Seeker (1949)
It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind. ~ Ch. 4
The God-Seeker (1949)
It is not known whether Martin ever completely accepted as a gentleman-scholar the Clay Tredgold who was devoted to everything about astronomy except studying it. ~ Ch. 22
Arrowsmith (1925)
It did seem sounder to build houses which he could build than to teach children a gospel which he did not altogether understand in a Sioux language which he could not quite speak.
The God-Seeker (1949)
The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
Elmer Gantry (1927)
The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy.
Babbitt (1922)
An ugly woodshed that's there, right on the ground, is handsomer to me than a ten-story temple that isn't there. ~ Ch. 57
The God-Seeker (1949)
Pickerbaugh apparently believed that this research would take six weeks; Martin had hoped to do it in two years; and with the present interruptions it would require two hundred. ~ Ch. 21
Arrowsmith (1925)