M.K. Hobson > M.K.'s Quotes

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

“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

“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, Sister Carrie

“Art is the stored honey of the human soul.”
― Theodore Dreiser

“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.”
― Theodore Dreiser

“Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.”
― Theodore Dreiser, Short Stories

“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.”
― Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

“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, The Genius

“When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.”
― Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

“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, Sister Carrie

“We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“There are two kinds of Fools. The real Fool is the most sincere of mortals: the Court Fool and his kind—the trifling, jesting buffoon—but simulate the family virtue, and steal the family name, for sordid purposes.”
― Albion Winegar Tourgée, A Fool's Errand: By One of the Fools

“We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“Detectives and policemen, as a class, are athletic men. They like games and sports and their minds and inclinations are healthy. They make mistakes, of course, but they seldom beat a man who doesn't deserve it. I'll admit that when a hold-up mob is brought into court with faces bandaged, it can be assumed that all of them didn't fall down stairs or roll off a cell bunk, accidentally. But neither does the hold-up man or the gun pull his trigger accidentally.”
― Cornelius Willemse, Behind the Green Lights

“The 'Third Degree' is not without its humorous moments.”
― Cornelius Willemse, Behind the Green Lights

“I was no saint. But I was told that I was a good cop.”
― Cornelius Willemse, Behind the Green Lights