299 Quotes by Sinclair Lewis

Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider.

Blessed be they who are not Patriots and Idealists, and who do not feel they must dash right in and Do Something About It, something so immediately important that all doubters must be liquidated – tortured – slaughtered! Good old murder, that since the slaying of Abel by Cain has always been the new device by which all oligarchies and dictators have, for all future ages to come, removed opposition!

You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.

It keeps strays in the flock. To word it differently: ‘You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don’t believe in it, then you MUST live up to it!

There is no Solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect!

Morning always promises miracles.

She watched the hulk of marriage drifting down on her frail speed-boat of aspiration, and steered in desperate circles.

A country that tolerates evil means- evil manners, standards of ethics-for a generation, will be so poisoned that it never will have any good end.

HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.