Theodore Dreiser Quotes

I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.

Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.

A thought will color a world for us.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.

Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.

Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.

Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

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.

Nothing is proved, all is permitted.

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.

Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.

The thing that impressed me then as now about New York… was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant… the strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak - and so very, very many.

If we are to extract any joy out of our span, we must think and plan and make things better not only for ourselves but for others, since joy for ourselves depends upon our joy in others and theirs in us.

All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.

If you have that unconquerable urge to write, nothing will stop you from writing.

The strong man wants to be allowed to DO; the little man wants to stop him.

To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.

It isn't myself that's important in this transaction apparently; the individual doesn't count much in the situation...all of us are more or less pawns. We're moved about like chessmen by circumstances over which we have no control.

It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp.