67 Quotes by William Dean Howells

Those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them -- are ruinous!

Every one is expected to look out for himself here. I fancy that there would be very little rising if men were expected to rise for the sake of others, in America.

She felt him more than life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes a woman kill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannot have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul.

I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo' if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience.

People naturally despise a dependant.

Walt Whitman was not the first to observe that we are all naked under our clothes, but he was one of the greatest, if not the first, to preach a gospel of nudity.

Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?

The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.