Harry Sinclair Lewis, 1885 - 1951
Born: 7 February 1885, Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Died: 10 January 1951, Rome, Italy
Educated in the public schools of a small town, Lewis was tall, pop-eyed, and afflicted with acne. He was an avid and somewhat romantic reader as a boy, he attempted to run away from home at age thirteen to be a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. He spent a year at Oberlin Academy to prepare for Yale, where he earned a degree in 1908 and set to work writing romantic poems and stories at night and picking up a series of jobs to pay the bills. He became adept at cranking out shallow popular stories that appeared in various magazines and selling plots to other authors including Jack London, who notably had issues with plotting. He wrote five novels before 1920 of which he was not proud, but found his voice with Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Elmer Gantry (1927). He was awarded, but refused, a Pulitzer in 1926 for Arrowsmith on the grounds that the prize was to be awarded for a work that presented "the wholesome atmosphere of American Life" and his work was critical of just that. He was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, a prize he accepted. The award presentation largely focused on Babbitt. He published nine more novels after the Nobel, none with the reach of his work in the '20s. He spent his last years in Europe, refusing to see friends, and died from advanced alcoholism in a clinic outside Rome.
Biography from Wikipedia and Nobel Foundation
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
Sinclair Lewis quotes:
Quotes found : 57 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
Click here to find books by Sinclair Lewis at Amazon.com
- A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Main Street (1920) - Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - All of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Babbitt (1922) - Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith - Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here (1935) - Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Main Street (1920) - Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - The Job (1917) - Good sense from a child was not necessarily contemptible beside foolishness from a grown-up. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - The God-Seeker (1949) - He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Elmer Gantry (1927) - He is the only real revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone knows how liddle he knows. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Arrowsmith (1925) - He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Arrowsmith (1925) - He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - Elmer Gantry (1927) - He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended. permalink
Sinclair Lewis - The Job (1917) - I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity. permalink
Sinclair Lewis
Quotes found : 57 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
Please report any problems on this page! If you see any typos, incorrect attributions, deformed characters, or any other problem with this page, we want to fix it as soon
as possible. Please click here to report errors.
Note: Do not use titles in author searches, we don't use them, including president, senator, prime minister, king, queen, saint, pope, or doctor, or abbreviations thereof. See explanation here.
