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Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.
William Dean Howells -
A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk, and only replies to the quality.
William Dean Howells
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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.
William Dean Howells -
Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
William Dean Howells -
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 -
How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?
William Dean Howells -
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
William Dean Howells -
The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.
William Dean Howells
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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.
William Dean Howells -
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.
William Dean Howells -
Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.
William Dean Howells -
Some people stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
William Dean Howells -
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.
William Dean Howells -
He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
William Dean Howells
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The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
William Dean Howells -
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.
William Dean Howells -
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.
William Dean Howells -
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.
William Dean Howells