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Sinclair Lewis Quotes

"People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'"
Business

"When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read."

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."

"Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age."
Age

"The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century."

"Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment."

"There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull."

"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."

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...""

"In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman."

"There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble."

"What is love? It is the morning and the evening star."

"Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country."

"Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead."

"Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form."

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