299 Quotes by Sinclair Lewis


  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, ’tain’t any laughing matter!

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism.

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    Why, she said, with a smile which snapped back after using as abruptly as a stretched rubber band, didn’t he take a nice walk?

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    What’d you like me to buy you, Nan? Some pearls or – ” She stopped before him, planted her arms akimbo, and spoke furiously. “I am not vot you call a gold-digger! I am not lady enough! If when you get tired of me, you vant to give me a hundred dollars – or fifty – fine. But you must, by God, understand, when Nande Azeredo takes a man, it iss because she likes him! Pearls? What would I do with pearls? Can I eat pearls?

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    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.

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  • Author Sinclair Lewis
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    Honestly, I think that the sense of humor of the people that TALK about having a ‘sense of humor’ is a worse vice than drinking.

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