Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

William Dean Howells

American Novelist, Poet, Editor and Critic

"I know, indeed, of nothing more subtle 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 a fine physical state. It cannot be bought. But it is the keenest joy, after all; and the toiler's truest and best reward."

"If he has not enjoyed writing no one will enjoy reading."

"If he was half as bad, he would have been too bad to be."

"If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences."

"If one must, it ought to be champagne."

"If one were poor, one ought to be deserving."

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

"'I'm not at all sure he does. You women think that because a young man dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. It doesn't at all follow. He dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do with his time, and because they seem to like it. I dare say that Tom has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else in town."

"Imitators of one another than of nature."

"Impropriety if not indecency promises literary success."

"In Altruria every one works with his hands, so that the hard work shall not all fall to any one class; and this manual labor of each is sufficient to keep the body in health, as well as to earn a living. After the three, hours? work, which constitutes a day?s work with us, is done, the young people have all sorts of games and sports, and they carry them as late into life as the temperament of each demands."

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

"In school there was as little literature then as there is now."

"In the South there was nothing but a mistaken social ideal."

"Incoherencies of people meeting after a long time."

"Incredible in their insipidity."

"Industrial slavery."

"Inexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and misgiving."

"Inexperience takes this effect (literary lewdness) for reality."

"Insatiable English fancy for the wild America no longer there."

"Insensate pride that mothers have in their children's faults."

"Intellectual poseurs."

"Intent upon some point in the future."

"Is it worthwhile to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?"

"It seems to me a proof of the small advance our race has made in true wisdom, that we find it so hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do."

"It was mighty pretty, as Pepys would say."

"It was not a particularly sane spectacle, that impatience to be off to some place that lay not only in the distance, but also in the future ? to which no line of road carries you with absolute certainty across an interval of time full of every imaginable chance and influence. It is easy enough to buy a ticket to Cincinnati, but it is somewhat harder to arrive there. Say that all goes well, is it exactly you who arrive?"

"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 barbarize."

"It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this. New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry."

"It's very odd...that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate--all those values shrink abominably."

"Joyful shame of children who have escaped punishment."

"Kept her talking vacuities when her heart was full."

"Kindness and gentleness are never out of fashion."

"Kissing goes by favor, in literature as in life."

"Languages, while they live, are perpetually changing."

"Led a life of public seclusion."

"Left him to do what the cat might."

"Let fiction cease to lie about life."

"Lewd literature seems to give a sanction to lewdness in the life."

"Lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm."

"Life alone is credible to the young."

"Liked to find out good things and great things for himself."

"Literature beautiful only through the intelligence."

"Literature has no objective value."

"Literature is Business as well as Art."

"Little knot of conscience between her pretty eyebrows."

"Lived a thousand little lies every day."

"Livy Clemens: the loveliest person I have ever seen."

"Livy: Well, if you are to be lost, I want to be lost with you."

"Long breath was not his; he could not write a novel."