We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life.
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.
There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.
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.
It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.
It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.
He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.
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.
You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.
You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.
Sleep with me sleep with my dogs-
Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.
She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.
If travel were so inspiring and informing a business...then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers, Pullman porters, and Mormon missionaries.
Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth...
Well, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?
He said brokenly many things beautiful in their common-ness.
The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day.
Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another’s movements than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week.
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
What are these unheard of sins you condemn so much - and like so well?
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
Author sees the "congested idealism" of the generally discontent as reservoir that will support centralized power even while disagreeing with many specific provisions.
I was feeling rational and restless, which is horrible for watching movies
If that woman is on the side of the angels, then I have no choice; I must be on the side of the devil.
He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason
The author says one character's definition of a classic is any book he'd heard of before he was thirty.
NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.
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. )
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.
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.
To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.
She bought a budget-plan account book and made her budgets as exact as budgets are likely to be when they lack budgets.
It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.
Your lips are for songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight.
She found beauty in the children.
Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.
Whatever she might become she would never be static.
She laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much as ever.
She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull,
Lord, why can't the women let you alone? Just because once or twice, seven hundred million years ago, you were a poor fool, why can't they let you forget it?
And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on 'Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt' had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.
The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies' Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.
In a world of groceries and sermons
The Wonderlust--probably it's a worse affliction than the Wanderlust.
If you want to be a writer, learn to type.
He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti.
On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose.
HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.
The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.
Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry.
