Theodore Dreiser Quotes
Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.
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.
Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.
Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.
Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.
Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
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.
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.
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 circustance.
You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It's chemical. What are you going to do about it?
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.
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.
All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.
I acknowledge the Furies. I believe in them. I have heard the disastrous beating of their wings.
When a man, however passively, becomes an obstacle to the fulfillment of a woman's desires, he becomes an odious thing in her eyes, - or will, given time enough.
Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.
A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.
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 Quotes: "Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain."](https://www.quoteslyfe.com/images/collection3/quotations1101/Dreiser-wanted-to-write-the-next-great-1101419.jpg)
Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain.
Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Conservatism -- hard work -- saving one's money -- looking neat and gentlemanly. It was such an Eveless paradise, that.
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
