Theodore Dreiser Quotes

It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Nature, machine-like, works definitely and heartlessly, if in the main beautifully. Hence, if we, as individuals, do not make this dream of a god or what he stands for us real in our thoughts and deeds, then he is not real or true. ~ Theodore Dreiser

if my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line: Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century), the ancient Greek dramatists, theElizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off. ~ Henry Miller

The strong man wants to be allowed to DO; the little man wants to stop him. ~ Theodore Dreiser

As they sang, this nondescript and indifferent street audience gazed, held by the peculiarity of such an unimportant-looking family publicly raising its collective voice against the vast skepticism and apathy of life. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Harriet, to hide her excitement, had turned to the bookshelves in the corner between the windows and the fireplace. The books, untidily arranged, some standing, some piled on their sides, with newspapers and magazines wedged among them, confused her. There were no sets and a great many were paper-backed. She saw friends - Mr. Dickens was present - and nodding acquaintances - Laurence Sterne, for instance, and Theodore Dreiser - but they were among strangers: Henry Miller, Norman Douglas, Saki, Ronald Firbank, strangers all. ~ Jack Iams

Theodore Dreiser Should ought to write nicer. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I was in Chicago before I came here, but I didn't do so very much dancing. I had to work. He was thinking how such girls as she had everything, as contrasted with girls like Roberta, who had nothing. And yet, as he now felt in this instance, he liked Roberta better. She was sweeter and warmer and kinder - not so cold. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Conservatism
hard work
saving one's money
looking neat and gentlemanly. It was such an Eveless paradise, that. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Oh, blessed are the children of endeavor in this, that they try and are hopeful. And blessed also are they who, knowing, smile and approve. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely. ~ Theodore Dreiser

What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers. ~ Dorothy Parker

Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy all in one weekend and couldn't put it down - I locked myself in my room. Now that was antithetical to every other book I was reading at the time because Dreiser really had no style, but it was powerful. ~ Joan Didion

...the past was so painful at any point. It seared and burned. ~ Theodore Dreiser

For a while he sat idly outside his door brooding in the spring sun.

In "The Lost Phoebe". ~ Dreiser Theodore

Every person according to his light," said Ames "You must help the world express itself. Use will make your powers endure ... ~ Theodore Dreiser

Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave. ~ Theodore Dreiser

The mystery of life
its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly ... has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why. ~ Theodore Dreiser

When waters engulf us we reach for a star. ~ Theodore Dreiser

People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Shakespeare, I come ! ~ Theodore Dreiser

All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Only in rare instances and with rare individuals does there seem to be any guiding light from within. ~ Theodore Dreiser

What matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul? ~ Theodore Dreiser

We are inclined sometimes to wring our hands much more profousely over the situation of another than the mental attitude of that other [..] would seem to warrant. People do not grieve so much sometimes over their own state as we imagine. They suffer, but they bear it manfully. [...] We see, as we grieve for them, the whole detail of their blighted carreer, a vast confused imagery of mishaps covering years, much as we read a double decade tragedy in a ten-hour novel. The victim, meanwhile, for the single day or morrow is not actually anguished. He meets his unfolding fate by the minute and the hour ast it comes. ~ Theodore Dreiser

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstances. All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again. I cite the great civilizations of China and India. ~ Theodore Dreiser

It is an exceptional thing to find beauty, youth, compatibility, intelligence, your own point of view - softened and charmingly emotionalized - in another. ~ Theodore Dreiser

He paused, wishing to embrace her, but feeling for the moment that he should not. Then, reaching into a waistcoat pocket, he took from it a thin gold locket, the size of a silver dollar, which he opened and handed to her. One interior face of it was lined with a photograph of Berenice as a girl of twelve, thin, delicate, supercilious, self-contained, distant, as she was to this hour. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Furthermore, some of the best people in the country were connected with the Communist movement in some way, heroes and heroines one could admire. There was Paul Robeson, the fabulous singer-actor-athlete whose magnificent voice could fill Madison Square Garden, crying out against racial injustice, against fascism. And literary figures (weren't Theodore Dreiser and W. E. B. DuBois Communists?), ~ Howard Zinn

Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strun ~ Theodore Dreiser

The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears. ~ Theodore Dreiser

We who feel that justice is not being done have but one thing to do: that is fight, by argument, by example, by insistence on fair play wherever we have the power to do so. The rest is in the hands of the Lord, or nature, which swings, apparently, from one extreme to another. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I refused to have bookshelves, horrified that I'd feel compelled to organise the books in some regimented system - Dewey or alphabetical or worse - and so the books lived in stacks, some as tall as me, in the most subjective order I could invent.
Thus Nabokov lived between Gogol and Hemingway, cradled between the Old World and the New; Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Hardy were stacked together not for their chronological proximity but because they all reminded me in some way of dryness (though in Dreiser's case I think I was focused mainly on his name): George Eliot and Jane Austen shared a stack with Thackeray because all I had of his was Vanity Fair, and I thought that Becky Sharp would do best in the presence of ladies (and deep down I worried that if I put her next to David Copperfield, she might seduce him). ~ Rebecca Makkai

I have seen youths bright eyed and fair groping after bubbles in rapture, and conceiving them diamonds and the glitter of fine jewels, until their hand closed over a something that was not to be felt nor longer seen, mere colored air. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Why must women torment me so? ~ Theodore Dreiser

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. ~ Theodore Dreiser

If we are to extract any joy out of our span, we must think and plan and make things better not only for ourselves but for others, since joy for ourselves depends upon our joy in others and theirs in us. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Your writer, your scientist, your chief official, all have lost the power to revive the early illusion concerning fame and high place. Their beauty and delight is like the mirage in the heavens, only plain to the eye outside; within is nothing. ~ Theodore Dreiser

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands
Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college. ~ Edward Abbey

What thought engendered the spirit of Circe, or gave to a Helen the lust of tragedy? What lit the walls of Troy? Or prepared the woes of an Andromache? By what demon counsel was the fate of Hamlet prepared? And why did the weird sisters plan ruin to the murderous Scot?
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
In a mulch of darkness are bedded the roots of endless sorrows - and of endless joys. Canst thou fix thine eye on the morning? Be glad. And if in the ultimate it blind thee, be glad also! Thou hast lived. ~ Theodore Dreiser

In the light of the world's attitude toward woman and her duties, the nature of Carrie's mental state deserves consideration. Actions such as hers are measured by an arbitrary scale. Society possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things. All men should be good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed? ~ Theodore Dreiser

What old illusion of hope is not here forever repeated! Says the soul of the toiler
to itself, "I shall soon be free. I shall be in the ways and the hosts of the merry. The
streets, the lamp, the lighted chamber set for dining are for me. The theatres, the halls,
the parties, the ways of rest and the paths of song - these are mine in the night." Though
all humanity be still enclosed in the shops, the thrill runs abroad. It is in the air. The
dullest feel something which they may not always express or describe. It is the lifting of
the burden of toil. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Depend upon it; from every condition of distress or evil, there is a great reaction, and the greater the distress or evil, the greater the reaction. ~ Theodore Dreiser

The thing that impressed me then as now about New York ... was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant ... the strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak - and so very, very many. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Innate sensuousness rarely has any desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Art is the stored honey of the human soul. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I will kneel and strike my breast, then touch the dust with my forehead; I will, I will. Only do not forsake me, oh god of beauty. ~ Theodore Dreiser

She merely beamed a fatty beam. She was almost ponderous, and pink, with a tendency to a double chin. ~ Theodore Dreiser

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance. ~ Theodore Dreiser

She turned; she bruised under her heel the scaly head of this dark suspicion-as terrifying to her as his guilt was to him. 'O Absalom, my Absalom! Come, come, we will not entertain such a thought. God himself would not urge it upon a mother. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I don't think people believe that any more, I don't think people think that it really matters whether you appreciate Henry James more than Theodore Dreiser. ~ Louis Menand

And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must succeed. That's what the world was made for. That's what he was made for. That was what he would have to do. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Now. If any habits ever had time to fix upon her, they would have operated here. Habits are peculiar things. They will drive the really non-religious mind out of bed to say prayers that are only a custom and not a devotion. The victim of habit, when he has ~ Theodore Dreiser

If you have that unconquerable urge to write, nothing will stop you from writing. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life - he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance... In this intermediate stage he wavers - neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will... We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth. ~ Theodore Dreiser

A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy ... ~ Theodore Dreiser

A thought will color a world for us. ~ Theodore Dreiser

President's brilliant theory of vending his wares direct to the people - was perhaps the only one who had suspicions. He had once written a brilliant criticism to some inquirer, in which he had said that no enterprise of such magnitude as the Northern Pacific had ever before been entirely dependent upon one house, or rather upon one man, and that he did not like it. I am not sure that the lands through which the road runs are so unparalleled in climate, soil, timber, minerals, etc., as Mr. Cooke and his friends would have us believe. Neither do I think that the road ~ Theodore Dreiser

In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking- chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Oh, the moon is fair tonight along the Wabash, From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay; Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming On the banks of the Wabash, far away. ~ Theodore Dreiser

At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Literature must always be about gloom of one sort or another, on the principal that there is nothing interesting to be said about happy people. ~ Theodore Zeldin

I believe in an America in which the fruits of productivity and prosperity are shared by all, by workers as well as owners, by those at the bottom as well as those at the top; an America in which the sacrifices required by national security are shared by all, by profiteers in the back offices as well as volunteers on the front lines. ~ Theodore C. Sorensen

Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of failure to agree on terminology. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

One of the characteristics of modern political life is its professionalization, such that it attracts mainly the kind of people with so great an avidity for power and self-importance that they do not mind very much the humiliations of the public exposure to which they are inevitably subjected. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Where a trust becomes a monopoly the state has an immediate right to interfere. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

A genuine primary is a fight within the family of the party - and, like any family fight, is apt to be more bitter and leave more enduring wounds than battle with the November enemy. ~ Theodore H. White

Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation. ~ Theodore Levitt

Do Something Now. If not you, who? If not here, where? If not now, when? ~ Theodore Roosevelt

All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The English reputation for humour is a way by which people avoid revealing themselves and have superficial relationships, so that you can engage in banter without making yourself vulnerable. ~ Theodore Zeldin

There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. ~ Theodore M. Hesburgh

We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I regard the Masonic institution as one of the means ordained by the Supreme Architect to enable mankind to work out the problem of destiny; to fight against, and overcome, the weaknesses and imperfections of his nature, and at last to attain to that true life of which death is the herald and the grave the portal. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The Northwest is essentially a national domain; it is fitting that it should be, as it is, not only by position but by feeling, the heart of the nation. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul? ~ Theodore Roethke

I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for. ~ Theodore C. Sorensen

Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;Too close immediacy an exhaustion ~ Theodore Roethke

Necessity starves on the stoop of invention. ~ Theodore Roethke

All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

From reading of the people I admired - ranging from the soldiers of Valley Forge and Morgan's riflemen to my Southern forefathers and kinfolk - I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world. And I had a great desire to be like them. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

But what has happened during the last year and a half has forced all reasonably farsighted men to understand that we are living in a new world. We have let our navy deteriorate to a degree both shameful and alarming. We have shown by our own conduct when the Hague Conventions were violated that all such treaties are utterly worthless, as offering even the smallest safeguard against aggression. Above all, the immense efficiency, the utter ruthlessness, and the gigantic scale of the present military operations show that we need military preparedness on a scale never hitherto ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I teach writing courses and first of all, I teach my students what prosody is. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Faith is trusting Jesus to lead us and going where He leads. What avails it to me to analyze Saratoga water, and to believe in its virtues? I must drink the water if I want its purifying power. And the soul that has not actually drunk of Christ can never be purged from sin. ~ Theodore L. Cuyler

Life brings sorrows and joys alike. It is what a man does with them - not what they do to him - that is the true test of his mettle. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property ... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man. ~ Theodore Roosevelt