William Dean Howells Quotes (28 Quotes)



    The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.

    The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances is so perfect that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, almost of security and as you drowse upon the pallet of the sleeping car, and feel yourself hurled forward through the obscurity, you are almost thankful that you can do nothing, for it is upon this condition only that you can endure it and some such condition as this, I suppose, accounts for many heroic facts in the world.

    You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

    I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from fine physical state. It cannot be brought. But it is the keenest joy, after all and the toiler's truest and best reward.



    A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it.

    If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.

    In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.

    What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

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


    The action is best that secures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

    Tomorrow I shall be sixty-nine, but I do not seem to care. I did not start the affair, and I have not been consulted about it at any step.

    There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure a headache darkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens the spirit bereft of all reasonable consolations.


    The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.

    It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.

    Rapture of life ineffable, perfect--as if in the brier,
    Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.


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

    The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.

    Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart must hold both sisters, never seen apart.

    It was this willingness to find poetry in things around them that kept his life and Isabel's fresh, and they taught their children the secret of their elixir.

    In a moment it had come, the first serious dispute of their wedded life. It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing, and it was on them in full disaster ere they knew.

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


    Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
    (How shall I name it aright?


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