William Dean Howells (The Dean of American Letters) Quotes

The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.

William Dean Howells

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• Running
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• Metaphor

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Quotes to Explore

• I believed I was invincible.

  

  Lance Loud
  • Believed
  • Invincible

• I'm more the sort of person who doesn't like hugging strangers because we don't know each other, so we shouldn't.

  

  Carey Mulligan
  • Know
  • Like
  • Strangers

• When I was depressed, nobody expected anything of me, nor did I expect anything of myself. I was exempt from life's demands and risks. But if I were to find new life, who knows what daunting tasks I might be required to take on?

  

  Parker Palmer
  • Life
  • Myself
  • New

• When we begin to desire a thing, to yearn for it with all our hearts, we begin to establish relationship with it in proportion to the strength and persistency of our longing and intelligent effort to realize it.

  

  Orison Swett Marden
  • Relationship
  • Desire
  • Effort

• I love the Royal Family. The Queen, she's fabulous.

  

  Kate Moss
  • Family
  • Queen
  • Fabulous

• The mutated Marfan gene creates a defective version of fibrillin, a protein that provides structural support for soft tissues like blood vessels. Marfan victims often die young, in fact, after their aortas grow threadbare and rupture.

  

  Sam Kean
  • Support
  • Die
  • Grow

• If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.

  

  M. H. Abrams
  • You
  • Learn
  • Changing

• I am no longer concerned with sensation and innovation, but with the perfection of my style.

  

  Yves Saint Laurent
  • Style
  • Innovation
  • Perfection

• I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • Life
  • Good
  • Trying

• Our soldiers show every single day that they are more than good enough.

  

  Tammy Duckworth
  • Good
  • Single
  • Day

• For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • You
  • Everything
  • Lose

• My goal, as always, is simply to inform the public about an issue that is nearly impossible for them to learn about on their own. That is my only goal as a reporter.

  

  Dana Priest
  • Goal
  • Learn
  • Impossible

• The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.

  

  Adam Davidson
  • Economy
  • Rich
  • Taxation

• I love coming to London and seeing what people on the street are wearing.

  

  Harley Viera-Newton
  • People
  • Love
  • London

• Dick Cheney and Bush's rise to power were built on tons of money from corporations and a dulled press.

  

  Adam McKay
  • Money
  • Power
  • Rise

• Now there are certain things you have to prepare - like dialect and special skills. But in the moment, interaction between two characters on the page doesn't need - for me, I don't need to prepare that.

  

  Idris Elba
  • Moment
  • Page
  • Prepare

• I really love Alexa Chung's style. I really think she gets it right all the time. I've never seen a picture of her where I didn't love the outfit.

  

  Karen Gillan
  • Time
  • Love
  • She

• The problem is that I don't want to add another record to the world that is not necessary to be published, except to make some business. There has to be a musical reason.

  

  Eberhard Weber
  • World
  • Business
  • Problem

• I'm very lucky, I've got two very loving parents, still very much together, and always been very supportive.

  

  Kit Harington
  • Together
  • Parents

• We must take difficult decisions to see our business through these unprecedented times.

  

  Warren East
  • Decisions
  • Times
  • Unprecedented

• The world is really run by the Web. There's so much information out there that you can click and keep going down the rabbit hole finding stuff.

  

  Big Boi
  • World

• Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

  

  Kenneth Koch

• The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.

  

  William Dean Howells
  • Science
  • Giving
  • Running