An American Tragedy Quotes

“what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Who were these people with money, and what had they done that they should enjoy so much luxury, where others as good seemingly as themselves had nothing? And wherein did these latter differ so greatly from the successful?”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“She turned; she bruised under her heel the scaly head of this dark suspicion-as terrifying to her as his guilt was to him. 'O Absalom, my Absalom! Come, come, we will not entertain such a thought. God himself would not urge it upon a mother.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“She merely beamed a fatty beam. She was almost ponderous, and pink, with a tendency to a double chin.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“...the past was so painful at any point. It seared and burned.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“What a wretched thing it was to be born poor and not to have any one to do anything for you and not to be able to do so very much for yourself!”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“For these local families of distinction were convinced that not only one's family but one's wealth was the be-all and end-all of every happy union meant to include social security. And in consequence, while considering Clyde as one who was unquestionably eligible socially, still, because it had been whispered about that his means were very slender, they were not inclined to look upon him as one who might aspire to marriage with any of their daughters.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“It was that old mass yearning for a likeness in all things that troubled them, and him.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“And they were always testifying as to how God or Christ or Divine Grace had rescued them from this or that predicament—never how they had rescued any one else. And”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“I was in Chicago before I came here, but I didn’t do so very much dancing. I had to work.” He was thinking how such girls as she had everything, as contrasted with girls like Roberta, who had nothing. And yet, as he now felt in this instance, he liked Roberta better. She was sweeter and warmer and kinder—not so cold.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Please write me, Clyde, a long, cheery letter, even though you don't want to, and tell me all about how you have not thought of me once since I've been away or missed me at all— you used to, you know, and how you don't want me to come back and you can't possibly come up before two weeks from Saturday if then.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Who were these people with money, and what had they done that they should enjoy so much luxury, where others as good seemingly as themselves had nothing”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Like the large majority of those who profess and daily repeat the dogmas and creeds of the world, she had come into her practices and imagined attitude so insensibly from her earliest childhood on, that up to this time, and even later, she did not know the meaning of it all.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Days were going—going. But life—life—how was one to do without that—the beauty of the days— of the sun and rain—of work love, energy, desire. Why say to him so constantly now did to resolve all his care in divine mercy and think only of God, when now, now, was all?”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Dusk—of a summer night.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“was locked up here and they would not let him go. There was a system—a horrible routine system—as long since he had come to feel it to be so. It was iron. It moved automatically like a machine without the aid or the hearts of men. These guards! They with their letters, their inquiries, their pleasant and yet really hollow words, their trips to do little favors, or to take the men in and out of the yard or to their baths—they were iron, too—mere machines, automatons, pushing and pushing and yet restraining and restraining one—within these walls, as ready to kill as to favor in case of opposition— but pushing, pushing, pushing—always toward that little door over there, from which there was no escape—no escape—just on and on— until at last they would push him through it never to return! Never to return!”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“She would never understand his craving for ease and luxury, for beauty, for love—his particular kind of love that went with show, pleasure, wealth, position, his eager and immutable aspirations and desires. She could not understand these things. She would look on all of it as sin—evil, selfishness. And in connection with all the fatal steps involving Roberta and Sondra, as adultery—unchastity—murder, even. And she would and did expect him to be terribly sorry and wholly repentant, when, even now, and for all he had said to the Reverend McMillan and to her, he could not feel so—not wholly so—although great was his desire now to take refuge in God, but better yet, if it were only possible, in her own understanding and sympathetic heart. If it were only possible.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Would no one ever understand—or give him credit for his human—if all too human and perhaps wrong hungers—yet from which so many others—along with himself suffered?”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“So they decided against me. Now I will have to go through that door after all,—like all those others. They'll draw the curtains for me, too. Into that other room—then back across the passage— saying good-bye as I go, like those others. I will not be here any more." He seemed to be going over each step in his mind—each step with which he was so familiar, only now, for the first time, he was living it for himself.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“as I go, like those others. I will not be here any more." He seemed to be going over each step in his mind—each step with which he was so familiar, only now, for the first time, he was living it for himself.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“How could they judge him, these people, all or any one of them, even his own mother, when they did not know what his own mental, physical and spiritual suffering had been? And”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“You felt no sorrow? No shame? Then?" "Yes, shame, maybe. Maybe sorrow, too, a little. I knew it was terrible. I felt that it was, of course. But still—you see—" "Yes, I know. That Miss X. You wanted to get away." "Yes—but mostly I was frightened, and I didn't want to help her." "Yes! Yes! Tst! Tst! Tst! If she drowned you could go to that Miss X. You thought of that?" The Reverend McMillan's lips were tightly and sadly compressed. "Yes." "My son! My son! In your heart was murder then.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“Guards knew when blue devils had seized the inmates of these cages. They couldn't eat. And there were times, too, when even guards couldn't eat.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“It was given unto you to know the Peace of God," he insisted, quoting Paul and thereafter sentences from Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, on how easy it was—if Clyde would but repeat and pray as he had asked him to—for him to know and delight in the "peace that passeth all understanding.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“What followed then was what invariably follows in the wake of every tortured consciousness. From what it dreads or hates, yet knows or feels to be unescapable, it takes refuge in that which may be hoped for—or at least imagined.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“The "death house" in this particular prison was one of those crass erections and maintenances of human insensitiveness and stupidity principally for which no one primarily was really responsible.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“I know that as you gentlemen view such things, such conduct has no excuse for being. One may be the victim of an internal conflict between two illicit moods, yet nevertheless, as the law and the church see it, guilty of sin and crime. But the truth, none-the-less, is that they do exist in the human heart, law or no law, religion or no religion, and in scores of cases they motivate the actions of the victims. And we admit that they motivated the actions of Clyde Griffiths.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“you could no more see him in the light that you do than you could rise out of that box and fly through those windows.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“You have heard him called a man—a bearded man—a criminal and a crime-soaked product of the darkest vomiting of Hell.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

“And so another miserable, black and weary night. And then another miserable gray and wintry morning.”
― Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy