William Dean Howells Quotes
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How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?
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Each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world.
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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.
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Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
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A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk, and only replies to the quality.
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We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.
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Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.
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Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
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A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.
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He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
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The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.
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The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
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Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.
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It is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.
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The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
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Do not trouble yourselves about standards or ideals; but try to be faithful and natural: remember that there is no greatness, no beauty, which does not come from truth to your own knowledge of things; and keep on working, even if your work is not long remembered.
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I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from fine physical state. It cannot be brought. But it is the keenest joy, after all; and the toiler's truest and best reward.
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The wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and sorrow.