66 quotes
A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists".
Elmer Gantry (1927)
When he gets uppity about his supposed learning, I just take it on myself to remind him that God and his angels know almost as much as college professors ~ Ch. 23
The God-Seeker (1949)
Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working. ~ Ch. 17
The God-Seeker (1949)
Good sense from a child was not necessarily contemptible beside foolishness from a grown-up. ~ Ch. 3
The God-Seeker (1949)
Maybe he was not a good-enough Christian to get the proper zest out of mortifying his indolent flesh. ~ Ch. 15
The God-Seeker (1949)
She did her work with the thoroughness of mind which reveres details and never quite understands them. ~ Ch. 18
Babbitt (1922)
I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts. ~ Martin, Ch. 22
Arrowsmith (1925)
Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man. ~ Ch. 16
Arrowsmith (1925)
Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God. ~ Ch. 21
The God-Seeker (1949)
The dinner was the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. ~ Ch. 8
Babbitt (1922)
Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.
Main Street (1920)
The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.
Main Street (1920)
"I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.
Main Street (1920)
He prayed, 'Lord God, let us be the kind of Christians that you would be if you were a Christian'. ~ Ch. 24
The God-Seeker (1949)
I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries. ~ Ch. 7
Babbitt (1922)
It came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. ~ Ch. 25
Babbitt (1922)
I don't believe in fear of divine vengeance, and I do believe in justice and equality.... ~ Ch. 57
The God-Seeker (1949)
As they talked around the fire in the sitting-room, he was embarrassed by the nakedness of their piety. ~ Ch. 22
The God-Seeker (1949)
He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance. ~ Ch. 22
Arrowsmith (1925)
The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. ~ Ch. 1, First lines
Arrowsmith (1925)