Sinclair Lewis citáty

strana 2

„Nejlepšího člověka vždy hledej mezi těmi, které svět zatracuje.“

„Zima není roční období, to je okupace.“

„Rozdělíte-li se s někým o svou radost, zdvojnásobí se, rozdělíte-li se o smutek, stane se polovičním.“

„Reklama je velmi cenný ekonomický činitel, protože je to nejlevnější způsob, jak prodat zboží, zvlášť je-li bezcenné.“

„V podstatě, až na skandální výjimky, přinesla demokracie pracujícím víc vážnosti, než kolik kdy měli.“

„Je to typ ženy, která žije pro druhé - poznáte to podle jejich uštvaného výrazu.“

„Nejtvrdším kritikem je ten, kdo je k naší práci lhostejný.“

„Čím dřív si člověk uvědomí, že se s ním nikdo nebude mazlit a že nemůže čekat, aby ho někdo krmil zadarmo a tak, nebo že jeho parchantům někdo poskytne bezplatné vzdělání a co všechno, dokud si na to nevydělá, rozumíš, tím dřív se vrhne do práce a bude vyrábět – vyrábět – vyrábět. To Amerika potřebuje, a ne ty vaše pohádečky, které v dělníkovi jenom oslabují sílu vůle a sugerují jeho parchantům všelijaké myšlenky, které dělné třídě nepříslušejí.
(přel. J. Škvorecký)“

„Potíž s touto zemí je, že je příliš mnoho lidí, kteří říkají: „Potíž s touto zemí je ...“.“

„Konverzace bylo mnoho a většina z ní zněla jako zbytek.“

“It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.”

“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”

“Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.”

“There had to be one man in town independent enough to sass the banker!”

“He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance.”

“The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.”

“They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a tossup with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism.”

“Maybe he was not a good-enough Christian to get the proper zest out of mortifying his indolent flesh.”

“Slow yellow river flowing, willows that gesture in tepid August airs, and four children playing at greatness, as, doubtless, great men themselves must play.”

“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… Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius. Such a society functions admirably in the production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors.”

“They've worked out elaborate charts classifying all intellectual occupations and interests, with the methods and materials and tools, and especially the goals—the aims, the ideals, the moral purposes—that are suited to each of them. Really tremendous! Why, a musician or an engineer, for example, could look at his chart and tell accurately whether he was progressing fast enough, at his age, and if not, just what his trouble was, and the remedy.”

“Hours then of blasphemy and fury and debate, all in the theological terms that seem shocking to the literate citizens today, who believe in God but just don't care to mention him or any of the other lowly friends they knew before they went to Yale.”

“With… small-town life… there are hundreds of thousands… who are not content. The more intelligent young people… flee to the cities… and… stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted… is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment… the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.”

“Deacon Uriel Gadd was a man of integrity, granite-rough and lichen-coated. The punishment in his rheumatism, clearly sent of God, and the defection of his son Elijah, had weakened him only in making him somewhat less contemptuous of his sentimental son Aaron. All other persons he divided into fools, scoundrels and the blessedly elect, with only himself indisputably in the last class.”

“Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man.”

“The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air.”

“An ugly woodshed that's there, right on the ground, is handsomer to me than a ten-story temple that isn't there.”

“Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.”

“Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber of Commerce had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them had spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion.”

“He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance.”

“Probably none of the Weagles gave five minutes' thought a year to theology or ecclesiology, except Ora, who occasionally stirred up a lot of interesting family irritation by announcing that he was going to become a Catholic, an Episcopalian, a Buddhist, or a Seventh Day Adventist.”

“Good sense from a child was not necessarily contemptible beside foolishness from a grown-up.”

“Mr. Blingham, and may he fry in his own cooking-oil, was assistant treasurer of the Flaver-Saver Company.”

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

“Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. 'Nother words, have a doctor who won't take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!”

“Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.”

“I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.”

“Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.”