William Dean Howells Quotes
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Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?
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People naturally despise a dependant.
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Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.
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It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.
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The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.
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What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.
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By beauty of course I mean truth, for the one involves the other; it is only the false in art which is ugly, and it is only the ugly that is universal.
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Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
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Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
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If ever the public was betrayed by its press, it's ours.
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See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion;See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious.
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You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.
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Lord, for the erring thoughtNot into evil wrought:Lord, for the wicked willBetrayed and baffled still:For the heart from itself kept,Our thanksgiving accept.
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Lord, for the erring thought Not unto evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will Betrayed, and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, Our thanksgiving accept. For ignorant hopes that were Broken to our blind prayer: For pain, death, sorrow, sent Unto our chastisement: For all loss of seeming good, Quicken our gratitude.
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The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect. Satan has a fine intellect, but not the image of God.
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The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.
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There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.
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I wonder why we hate the past so.
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Out of the fragrant heart of bloom, The bobolinks are singing; Out of the fragrant heart of bloom The apple-tree whispers to the room, "Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
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The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.
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If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.
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n artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.
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In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.
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It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.