Theodore Dreiser Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“The thing that impressed me then as now about New York… was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant… the strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak - and so very, very many.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“I believe in the compelling power of love.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It's chemical. What are you going to do about it?”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“It isn't myself that's important in this transaction apparently; the individual doesn't count much in the situation...all of us are more or less pawns. We're moved about like chessmen by circumstances over which we have no control.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Innate sensuousness rarely has any desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“If we are to extract any joy out of our span, we must think and plan and make things better not only for ourselves but for others, since joy for ourselves depends upon our joy in others and theirs in us.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“If you have that unconquerable urge to write, nothing will stop you from writing.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Theodore Dreiser Should ought to write nicer.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Oh, the moon is fair tonight along the Wabash, From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay; Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming On the banks of the Wabash, far away.”
-- Theodore Dreiser -
“Depend upon it; from every condition of distress or evil, there is a great reaction, and the greater the distress or evil, the greater the reaction.”
-- Theodore Dreiser
You may also like:
-
Edith Wharton
Novelist -
Ernest Hemingway
Author -
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author -
Frank Norris
Novelist -
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Novelist -
George Stevens
Film director -
Jack London
Author -
John Fowles
Novelist -
John Galsworthy
Novelist -
Romain Rolland
Dramatist -
Sherwood Anderson
Novelist -
Sinclair Lewis
Novelist -
Stefan Zweig
Novelist -
Stephen Crane
Author -
Theodore Roosevelt
26th U.S. President -
Victor Hugo
Poet -
W. Somerset Maugham
Playwright -
Willa Cather
Author -
William Dean Howells
Author -
William Faulkner
Writer