Theodore Dreiser — Quotes from Author's Books

She knew what it was to meet with people who were indifferent, to walk alone amid so many who cared absolutely nothing about you. Had not she? Was not she at this very moment quite alone? Who was there among all whom she knew to whom she could appeal for sympathy? Not one. She was left to herself to brood and wonder.

The significance of the material and spiritual changes which sometimes overtake us are not very clear at the time.
A sense of shock, a sense of danger, and then apparently we subside to old ways, but the change has come.
Never again, here or elsewhere, will we be the same.

Little things brought out on such occasions need great love to obliterate them afterward.

Only the ashes of all her fine fancies were remaining — ashes still concealing, nevertheless, a few red embers of hope.

That other world of flesh into which has been woven pride and greed looks askance at the idealist, the dreamer.
If one says it is sweet to look at the clouds, the answer is a warning against idleness.
If one seeks to give ear to the winds, it shall be well with his soul, but they will seize upon his possessions.
If all the world of the so-called inanimate delay one, calling with tenderness in sounds that seem to be too perfect to be less than understanding, it shall be ill with the body.
The hands of the actual are forever reaching toward such as these—forever seizing greedily upon them.
It is of such that the bond servants are made.

Virtue is that quality of generosity which offers itself willingly for another's service, and, being this, it is held by society to be nearly worthless. Sell yourself cheaply and you shall be used lightly and trampled under foot. Hold yourself dearly, however unworthily, and you will be respected. Society, in the mass, lacks woefully in the matter of discrimination. Its one criterion is the opinion of others. Its one test that of self-preservation. Has he preserved his fortune? Has she preserved her purity? Only in rare instances and with rare individuals does there seem to be any guiding light from within.

He felt as if the world were not quite so bad with such a good man in it.

A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o’-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairylands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

Only in rare instances and with rare individuals does there seem to be any guiding light from within.

Did anything matter except goodness—goodness of heart? What else was there that was real?

It is a curious characteristic of the non-defensive disposition that it is like a honey-jar to flies. Nothing is brought to it and much is taken away. Around a soft, yielding, unselfish disposition men swarm naturally. They sense this generosity, this non-protective attitude from afar.

The written word and the hidden thought—how they conflict!

The relationship of man and woman...no more difficult or trying situation than this of mutual compatibility broken or disrupted by untoward conditions which in themselves have so little to do with the real force and beauty of the relationship itself.

It does not take money long to make plain its impotence, providing the desires are in the realm of affection.

It lessens a woman’s opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so pointedly and generously distributed. She sees but one object of supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself. If a man is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each.

Oh, how sad to see the world so gay and she so lonely.