Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951,) fully Harry Sinclair Lewis, was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. The most celebrated American literary figure of the 1920s, he was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1930.) His popular, satirical novels are now appreciated mainly for their socio-historical significance.
Born in Sauk Center, Minnesota, and educated at Yale University, Lewis became a journalist and wrote several minor works before Main Street (1920,) the first of many bestselling novels parodying the arid materialism and intolerance of U.S. small-town life.
Lewis’s celebrated work, Babbitt (1922,) still lends its title as a synonym for middle-class American boorishness. Other titles of this period are Martin Arrowsmith (1925,) Elmer Gantry (1927,) and Dodsworth (1929.) Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith in 1926 but declined it, declaring there were praiseworthy contenders than himself, a self-deprecatory disclaimer he reiterated in his Nobel lecture in 1930.
Afterward, Lewis tended to vindicate the ideologies and self-sufficiency he had formerly denounced. However, the shift of attitude did nothing to shrink his popularity. His later novels include Cass Timberlane (1945) and Kingsblood Royal (1947.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sinclair Lewis
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Writing
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Management
Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Courage, Bravery
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.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art
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.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Insults
A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.
—Sinclair Lewis
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Advertising
People will buy anything that is ‘one to a customer.’
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Business, Customers
What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Love
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.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Travel
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
—Sinclair Lewis
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Patriotism
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Books, Literature
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.
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: Critics, Criticism
The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, “The trouble with this country is…”
—Sinclair Lewis
Topics: America
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