60 Sinclair Lewis Quotes From The Nobel Prize-Winning Writer
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Harry Sinclair Lewis was a renowned American playwright and writer who went on to become the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature.
He also garnered the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Prometheus Hall of Fame award during his lifetime. Some of his best-known novels include 'Main Street' (1920), 'Babbitt' (1922), 'It Can't Happen Here'(1935), 'Elmer Gantry' (1927), and 'Dodsworth' (1929).
Sinclair Lewis was lauded throughout the literary community for punctuating his novels with ingenious satire and wit. We've collected a variety of great Sinclair Lewis quotes prepared for you and some of them are from his novels, 'Main Street' and 'Dodsworth'.
If you're thinking that you should have read Sinclair Lewis years ago, you're still not too late! Here are the best Sinclair Lewis quotes prepared for you.
If you would like some other great quotes, you should check out [Arthur Miller Quotes] and [Hemingway Love quotes].
Best Sinclair Lewis Quotes
This list is perfect for those who are looking for Sinclair Lewis 'It Can't Happen Here' quotes, Sinclair Lewis quotes 'Fascism comes to America', and 'Babbitt' Sinclair Lewis quotes. Here are the best Sinclair quotes, all for you.
1." Winter is not a season, it's an occupation."
- Sinclair Lewis.
2. "Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue."
- Sinclair Lewis.
3. "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."
- Sinclair Lewis.
4. "Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. "
- Sinclair Lewis.
5. "Intellectually, I know America is no better than any other country. Emotionally, I know she is better than every other country."
- Sinclair Lewis.
6. "What conceivable reason could one have for seeking after righteousness in a world which so hated righteousness?"
- Sinclair Lewis.
7. "On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose."
- Sinclair Lewis.
8. "Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities."
- Sinclair Lewis.
9. "When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism."
- Sinclair Lewis.
10. "There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble."
- Sinclair Lewis.
11. "One time I said that you were my soul. And that still goes."
- Sinclair Lewis.
12. "Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction."
- Sinclair Lewis.
13. "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."
- Sinclair Lewis.
14. "That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men."
- Sinclair Lewis.
15. "There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull."
- Sinclair Lewis.
16. "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."
- Sinclair Lewis.
17. "There are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don't wish to do."
- Sinclair Lewis.
18. "He had been bored in Paris, yet he liked crepes Susette better than flapjacks; he liked leaning over the bridges of the Seine better than walking on Sixth Avenue; and he couldn't, just now, be very excited about the new fenders for the Revelation car."
- Sinclair Lewis.
19. "He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously."
- Sinclair Lewis.
20. "It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose."
- Sinclair Lewis.
21. "The trouble with this country is... that there're too many people going about saying 'The trouble with this country is—'."
- Sinclair Lewis.
22. "Do you think it's so snobbish, to want to see something besides one's fellow citizens abroad?"
- Sinclair Lewis.
23. "He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation."
- Sinclair Lewis.
24. "Possible that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on savings them?"
- Sinclair Lewis.
25. "He is the only real revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone knows how liddle he knows."
- Sinclair Lewis.
26. "If you don't think for yourself, then you're admitting that your theory of happiness is the old dog asleep in the sun."
- Sinclair Lewis.
27. "Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability."
- Sinclair Lewis.
Sinclair Lewis Quotes About Love
Here are the best Sinclair Lewis quotes about love.
28. "What is love? It is the morning and the evening star."
- Sinclair Lewis.
29. "Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related."
- Sinclair Lewis.
30. "Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love."
- Sinclair Lewis, 'Main Street'.
31. "Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds."
- Sinclair Lewis.
32. "It was his first love; the first time in his life that he had been roused to through away caution and dignity."
- Sinclair Lewis.
33. "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."
- Sinclair Lewis, 'Elmer Gantry'.
34. "He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons."
- Sinclair Lewis.
35. "His text was from Proverbs: 'Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.'"
- Sinclair Lewis.
36. "What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life."
- Sinclair Lewis.
Sinclair Lewis Quotes About Death
This list has the best quotes by the American author Sinclair Lewis.
37. "Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. "
- Sinclair Lewis, 'Babbitt'.
38. "Oh, well, Doremus reflected, he had lived with Emma for thirty-four years, and not oftener than once or twice a year had he wanted to murder her."
- Sinclair Lewis, 'It Can't Happen Here'.
39. "The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest."
- Sinclair Lewis, 'Main Street'.
40. "Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service."
- Sinclair Lewis.
Sinclair Lewis Quotes About Writing
Here are some of the best Sinclair Lewis quotes about writing.
41. "If you want to be a writer, learn to type."
- Sinclair Lewis.
42. "Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people."
- Sinclair Lewis.
43. "Authors have the power to bore people long after we are dead."
- Sinclair Lewis.
44. "Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something."
- Sinclair Lewis.
45. "Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead."
- Sinclair Lewis.
46. "Author sees the 'congested idealism' of the generally discontent as reservoir that will support centralized power even while disagreeing with many specific provisions."
- Sinclair Lewis.
47. "Ellen Whoozis, the cocktail-party queen, who writes the Necking Notes, is going to marry the religious editor!"
- Sinclair Lewis.
48. "Writing is just work-there's no secret."
- Sinclair Lewis.
49. "In some respects, writing was his only form of human interaction."
- Sinclair Lewis.
50. "Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile."
- Sinclair Lewis.
51. "...in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman."
- Sinclair Lewis.
Sinclair Lewis Quotes About Life
Here is a list of Sinclair Lewis quotes about life from the author.
52. "Life is comfortable and clean enough here already. And so secure."
- Sinclair Lewis.
53. "I think perhaps we want a more conscious life."
- Sinclair Lewis.
54. "One day they wrangled--and endlessly, because they were not quarreling over any one thing in particular but over the differences in their philosophies of life..."
- Sinclair Lewis.
55. "I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life."
- Sinclair Lewis.
56. "The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it."
- Sinclair Lewis.
57. "You ought never to read anything--you ought only to live."
- Sinclair Lewis.
58. "I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be fatuous not to expect a fair number in return."
- Sinclair Lewis.
59. "But she knew that she still had no plan in life, save always to go along the same streets, past the same people, to the same shops."
- Sinclair Lewis.
60. "In novels, these truth-seekers quested the 'secret of life' in laboratories which did not seem to be provided with Bunsen flames or reagents..."
- Sinclair Lewis.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotesfor everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Sinclair Lewis Quotes then why not take a look at Tennessee Williams quotes, or William Faulkner quotes
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Bachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management
Moumita DuttaBachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management
A content writer and editor with a passion for sports, Moumita has honed her skills in producing compelling match reports and stories about sporting heroes. She holds a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta University, alongside a postgraduate diploma in Sports Management.
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