William Dean Howells Quotes

N artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty. ~ William Dean Howells

She had conquered, but she had also necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; but at any rate she had lost it. ~ William Dean Howells

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all. ~ William Dean Howells

The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment. ~ William Dean Howells

I am yours, for time and eternity
time and eternity. ~ William Dean Howells

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending. ~ William Dean Howells

And the characters are all invented as to their psychological evolution, though some are based upon those of real persons easily identifiable in that narrative. The drama is that of the actual events in its main development; but the vital incidents, or the vital uses of them, are the author's. At times he has enlarged them; at times he has paraphrased the accounts of the witnesses; in one instance he has frankly reproduced the words of the imposter as reported by one who heard Dylks's last address in ~ William Dean Howells

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things. ~ William Dean Howells

People naturally despise a dependant. ~ William Dean Howells

Primitive societies without religion have never been found. ~ 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

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

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

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. ~ William Dean Howells

It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this. New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry. ~ William Dean Howells

It's astonishing how well the worse reason looks when you try to make it appear the better. ~ William Dean Howells

A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk, and only replies to the quality. ~ William Dean Howells

No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know I've always contended that the affections could be made to combine pleasure and profit. I wouldn't have a man marry for money,
that would be rather bad,
but I don't see why, when it comes to falling in love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should ~ William Dean Howells

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

See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion;See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious. ~ William Dean Howells

How strange it (the earthquake) must all have seemed to them, here where they lived so safely always! They thought such a dreadful thing could happen to others, but not to them. That is the way! ~ William Dean Howells

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. ~ William Dean Howells

Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart. ~ William Dean Howells

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns. ~ William Dean Howells

The stranger looked at his watch; he jumped to his feet. "Nine o'clock! Mrs. Braile, I'm ashamed. But you must blame your husband, partly. Good night, ma'am; good - Why, look here, Squire Braile!" he arrested himself in offering his hand. "How about the obscurity of the scene where Joe Smith founded his superstition, which bids fair to live right along with the other false religions? Was Leatherwood, Ohio, a narrower stage than Manchester, New York? And in point of time the two cults were only four years apart. ~ William Dean Howells

It seems to me a proof of the small advance our race has made in true wisdom, that we find it so hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do. ~ William Dean Howells

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. ~ 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

It was not a particularly sane spectacle, that impatience to be off to some place that lay not only in the distance, but also in the future - to which no line of road carries you with absolute certainty across an interval of time full of every imaginable chance and influence. It is easy enough to buy a ticket to Cincinnati, but it is somewhat harder to arrive there. Say that all goes well, is it exactly you who arrive? ~ 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

I haven't done anything--yet. ~ William Dean Howells

An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. ~ William Dean Howells

The novelist might be greater possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious. ~ William Dean Howells

I wish you to believe whatever you think is true, at any and every cost. ~ William Dean Howells

People are born and married, and live and die, in the midst of an uproar so frantic that you would think they would go mad of it. ~ William Dean Howells

We can trace the operation of evil in the physical world ... but I am more and more puzzled about it in the moral world. There its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems to involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatsoever. ~ William Dean Howells

Tomorrow I shall be sixty-nine, but I do not seem to care. I did not start the affair, and I have not been consulted about it at any step. ~ William Dean Howells

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. ~ William Dean Howells

You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up. ~ William Dean Howells

It's very odd ... that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate
all those values shrink abominably. ~ William Dean Howells

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use - in or out of 'context' - of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war ~ Christopher Hitchens

New York may be splendidly gay or squalidly gay but prince or pauper, it's gay always ... Yes, gay is the word ... but frantic. I can't get used to it. They forget death, Basil; they forget death in New York. ~ William Dean Howells

Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It strikes at the foot of the feudal system! ~ William Dean Howells

... in Altruria every one works with his hands, so that the hard work shall not all fall to any one class; and this manual labor of each is sufficient to keep the body in health, as well as to earn a living. After the three, hours' work, which constitutes a day's work with us, is done, the young people have all sorts of games and sports, and they carry them as late into life as the temperament of each demands. ~ William Dean Howells

I don't know," said the papa. "We shall just have to keep on and see. Perhaps when they meet the Prince and Princess we shall find out. I don't suppose a boy would fall in love with a boy." "No," said the niece; "but he might want to go off with him and have fun, or something." "That's true," said the papa. "We've got to all watch out. ~ William Dean Howells

The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection. ~ 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

In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere. ~ William Dean Howells

I remember one time being told I could not play in a basketball game at the College of William and Mary because I was black, even though I was playing with a United States Army team. ~ Walter Dean Myers

Dean Mohamet, a Muslim landowner from Patna who had followed his British patron to Ireland. There he soon eloped with, and later marries, Jean Daly, from a leading Anglo-Irish family ... In 1807 Dean Mohamet moved to London where he opened the country's first Indian owned curry restaurant, Dean Mohamet's Hindoostanee Coffee House : ... He finally decamped to Brighton where he opened what can only be described as Britain's first oriental massage parlour and became "Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV. " ~ William Dalrymple

Wright's point was that the God of the Israelites is not the God who speaks, if speaking is a means of conveying a word that can be dissociated from acts, and thereby "dissociated from history and dealt with as an abstraction" for theological contemplation. ~ William Dean

By normal standards, Jesus' modus operandi was virtually an atheistic modus operandi, so that he could live through the irony of atheism, first divesting himself of a standard theism, then undergoing an ironic reversal toward a new theism. ~ William Dean

A dean is the conductor of an orchestra made up entirely of composers. ~ Mark William Roche

First, any term applied to God is only ana analogy; when this is forgotten, any God-defining term is sacrilegious. ~ William Dean

What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well, or the bell, or the stone walls, or the crisp October nights or the memory of dogwoods blooming. Our loyalty is not only to William Richardson Davie though we are proud of what he did 200 years ago today. Nor even to Dean Smith, though we are proud of what he did last March. No, our love for this place is based on the fact that it is as it was meant to be, the University of the people. ~ Charles Kuralt

William Stillman continues his fascinating exploration of the myriad connections between autism and human personality. The Soul of Autism makes a strong case for why we should embrace rather than fear the differences between us. ~ Dean Hamer

As [William] Valentiner noted in his uncompleted memoirs Remembering Artists, [Diego] Rivera's [Detroit Industry] murals rooted the Detroit Institute of Arts to the many-faceted jewel of its central court because of the harmonious, fertile relationship between "the industrialist" and "the artist." Rivera remarked to Valentiner how especially struck he was that "Edsel had none of the characteristics of the exploiting capitalist, that he had the simplicity and directness of a workman in his won factories and was like one of the best of them." Their relationship was like the murals themselves, a superb expression of pluralism, toleration, and empathy for the other, and of a cosmopolitan sense of all the Americas, not just of the United States of America or Detroit alone. ~ John Dean

LATE ONE NIGHT in early October 1913, William Yale lay in his tent in the mountains of Anatolia, struck by a sense of wonder at how quickly a life could change. Just three weeks earlier he had been living in ~ Scott Anderson

I don't want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I'd be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. ~ William Zinsser

When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about 'godless' Russia and the 'materialism' of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a 'change of heart'. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the' change of heart', much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system. ~ George Orwell

Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his academical career, must remember with kindness and tenderness the old university comrades and days. The young man's life is just beginning: the boy's leading-strings are cut, and he has all the novel delights and dignities of freedom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad health, or of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow's disappointment. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

But I give you my word, in the entire book there is nothing that cannot be said aloud in mixed company. And there is, also, nothing that makes you a bit the wiser. I wonder
oh, what will you think of me
if those two statements do not verge upon the synonymous. ~ Dorothy Parker

People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country. ~ William III Of England

Just hanging with some friends," I say vaguely.

"What friends? All your friends are here - " He waves a hand around the rink. "And I know for a fact you weren't with any of them."

I shrug. "You don't know these friends." Then I shift my gaze back to the ice as Dean grumbles beside me.

"Jesus fuck, you're worse than Antoine and Marie-Thérèse."

My head swings back. "Excuse me?"

"Forget it," he mutters.

Who the fuck are Antoine and Marie-Thérèse? Just like Dean knows all my friends, I know all of his, and I'm pretty sure we don't know anyone with those names. But whatever. I don't want him pushing me for answers, so I'm not about to push him. ~ Elle Kennedy

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. ~ William James

Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny. ~ William James

Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say. ~ William Faulkner

Even in chaos, there is order, purpose, and strange meaning that invites - but often thwarts - our investigation and our understanding. ~ Dean Koontz

Prosperity's the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters. ~ William Shakespeare

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Love moderately. Long love doth so.
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
*Love each other in moderation. That is the key to long-lasting love. Too fast is as bad as too slow.* ~ William Shakespeare

Achievement is by all accounts to a great extent a matter of clinging after others have given up. ~ William Feather

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was 'a basket case' before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. ~ William M. Arkin

If you are focusing your anger at government, you are focusing your anger at all of us. Government is just a personification of this country. ~ William J. Clinton

In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. ~ J. William Fulbright

Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced. ~ William Glasser

My stars shine darkly over
me ~ William Shakespeare

I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. ~ William Hazlitt

Yet they that know all things but know
That all this life can give us is
A child's laughter, a woman's kiss. ~ William Butler Yeats