Theodore Dreiser — Quotes from Author's Books

That's the one thing I have against you—you are so worried about what people think. They don't make your life. They certainly don't make mine. Think of yourself first. You have your own life to make. Are you going to let what other people think stand in the way of what you want to do?

And people who are deeply and earnestly in love with each other are not much concerned with the opinions of others in regard to themselves.
They are in love — and that is sufficient!

"All good things come to him who waits, you know.”
“Yes, unless you just turn out to be a waiter".

The Spendings of Fancy — Facts Answer with Sneers.

To the untravelled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love, it is the one thing which solaces and delights. Things new are too important to be neglected, and mind, which is a mere reflection of sensory impressions, succumbs to the flood of objects. Thus lovers are forgotten, sorrows laid aside, death hidden from view. There is a world of accumulated feeling back of the trite dramatic expression — “I am going away.”

Sunday passed with equal doubts, worries, assurances, and heaven knows what vagaries of mind and spirit.

The road downward has but few landings and level places.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

A man with a little money is just like a cat with a bell around its neck. Every rat knows exactly where it is and what it is doing.

Let no one ridicule the terrors of unrequited love. Its tentacles are cancerous, its grip is of icy death.

Life at worst or best was beautiful—had always been so.

It is so hard for us to know what we have not seen. It is so difficult for us to feel what we have not experienced.

Could a broken bowl be mended and called whole?
It might be called whole, but what of it?
Was it not broken and mended?

Outside his own home, he was lonely and not so very much less than lonely there.

His black eyes lit with a warmth which half displaced the cold make-believe that usually dwelt in them.

There are crises in all men's lives when they waver between the strict fulfilment of justice and duty and the great possibilities for personal happiness which another line of conduct seems to assure.