The Best Sinclair Lewis quotes

You have more people that love you than you know. — Sinclair Lewis

I love America, but I don’t like it. — Sinclair Lewis

The one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. — Sinclair Lewis

What is love? It is the morning and the evening star. — Sinclair Lewis

Love is the one thing that can really sure–enough lighten all of life’s dark clouds. — Sinclair Lewis

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won’t be for another thousand years? — Sinclair Lewis

Paris is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities. — Sinclair Lewis

Our american professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead. — Sinclair Lewis

When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag. — Sinclair Lewis

Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful? — Sinclair Lewis

It’s one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. — Sinclair Lewis

To a true–blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead. — Sinclair Lewis

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd. — Sinclair Lewis

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

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

And after saying good–by to him at the station, Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless. — Sinclair Lewis

If travel were so inspiring and informing a business … then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers. — Sinclair Lewis

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

Why, America’s the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country’s too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn’t happen here! — Sinclair Lewis

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

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. — Sinclair Lewis

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form. — Sinclair Lewis

The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides–taking instincts which Babbitt called ‘patriotism’ and ‘love of sport. — Sinclair Lewis

Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag. — Sinclair Lewis

In everything was the spirit of children’s play–not the rule–ridden, time–killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life. — Sinclair Lewis

Writing is just work–there’s no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes–it’s still just work. — Sinclair Lewis

I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts. — Sinclair Lewis

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 Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light–years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon. — Sinclair Lewis

The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, ‘The trouble with this country is…. — Sinclair Lewis

It isn’t what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class. — Sinclair Lewis

Intellectually, i know that america is no better than any other country; emotionally i know she is better than every other country. — Sinclair Lewis

Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. — Sinclair Lewis

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! — Sinclair Lewis

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, especially if the goods are worthless. — Sinclair Lewis

His march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling. — Sinclair Lewis

Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation. — Sinclair Lewis

On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. — Sinclair Lewis

We’d get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all. — Sinclair Lewis

What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much–and like so well? — Sinclair Lewis

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. — Sinclair Lewis

Now is a fact that cannot be dodged. — Sinclair Lewis

Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age. — Sinclair Lewis

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

He said brokenly many things beautiful in their common–ness. — Sinclair Lewis

Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry. — Sinclair Lewis

Writers kid themselves–about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work–there’s no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes–it is just work. — Sinclair Lewis