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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See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion;See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious.
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How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?
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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.
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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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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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It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.
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Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
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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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The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.
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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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Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
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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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If ever the public was betrayed by its press, it's ours.
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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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I wonder why we hate the past so.
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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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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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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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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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Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
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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.