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William Dean Howells
15 quotes
“We live, but a world has passed away With the years that perished to make us men.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mulberries (1871)
“The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Their Wedding Journey (1872)
“Lord, for the erring thought Not into 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.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And before you know me gone Eternity and I are one.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her mouth is a honey-blossom, No doubt, as the poet sings; But within her lips, the petals, Lurks a cruel bee that stings.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence [...]”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pordenone, IV (1886)
“See how today's achievement is only tomorrow's confusion; See how possession always cheapens the thing that was precious.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Editor's Study Christmas Literature (December 1888), p. 158-59, as quoted in An Imperative Duty, Appendix D, 7
“An 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.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Literary Passions (1895)
“The secret of the man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested, and this was, above all, the secret of the charm that Doctor Holmes had for every one. No doubt he knew it, for what that most alert intelligence did not know of itself was scarcely worth knowing. This knowledge was one of his chief pleasures, I fancy; he rejoiced in the consciousness which is one of the highest attributes of the highly organized man, and he did not care for the consequences in your mind, if you were so stupid as not to take him aright.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Literary Friends and Acquaintance : A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship (1900)
“The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (6 April 1903)
“I am not sorry for having wrought in common, crude material so much; that is the right American stuff; and perhaps hereafter, when my din is done, if anyone is curious to know what that noise was, it will be found to have proceeded from a small insect which was scraping about on the surface of our life and trying to get into its meaning for the sake of the other insects larger or smaller. That is, such has been my unconscious work; consciously, I was always, as I still am, trying to fashion a piece of literature out of the life next at hand.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (26 April 1903)
“Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Mark Twain (1910)
“What the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in French Ways and Their Meaning (1919) by Edith Wharton, p. 65
“The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and going about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.”
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) said by 1920 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source