William Dean Howells Quotes - Page 2

The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect. Satan has a fine intellect, but not the image of God.

There will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.

Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?

The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

Lord, for the erring thoughtNot into evil wrought:Lord, for the wicked willBetrayed and baffled still:For the heart from itself kept,Our thanksgiving accept.

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.

We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.

n artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

It is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.

How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?

Lord, for the erring thought Not unto evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will Betrayed, and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, Our thanksgiving accept. For ignorant hopes that were Broken to our blind prayer: For pain, death, sorrow, sent Unto our chastisement: For all loss of seeming good, Quicken our gratitude.

Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, hand-carts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amidst the turmoil, with foot-passengers winding in and out, and covering the sidewalks with their multitude, give the effect of a single monstrous organism, which writhes swiftly along the channel where it had run in the figure of a flood till you were tired of that metaphor. You are now a molecule of that vast organism.

Out of the fragrant heart of bloom, The bobolinks are singing; Out of the fragrant heart of bloom The apple-tree whispers to the room, "Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?

I wonder why we hate the past so.