American author (1885-1951)
He had never dined with a duchess, never received a prize, never been interviewed, never produced anything which the public could understand, nor experienced anything since his schoolboy amours which nice people could regard as romantic. He was, in fact, an authentic scientist.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Arrowsmith
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930
The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires--to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty.... He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Babbitt
Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Elmer Gantry
Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The Job
Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930
Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The God-Seeker
Now, you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce -- produce -- produce! That's what the country needs, and not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The Man Who Knew Coolidge
I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country where industrialism and finance and science flourish and the only arts that are vital and respected are architecture and the film, I have a considerable complaint.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930
Men of measured merriment! Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment, the men with measured merriment, oh, damn their measured merriment, and DAMN their careful smiles!
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Arrowsmith
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.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The God-Seeker
He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Elmer Gantry
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Babbitt
Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
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
The Trail of the Hawk
Aaron was uncomfortable and a little afraid. This, he thought, is how God might pray to his God.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The God-Seeker
I think it would be a good stunt to get along without any art at all for a generation, and see what we miss.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The Trail of the Hawk
A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth... Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The God-Seeker
Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street