WD
William Dean Howells
67quotes
Quotes by William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells's insights on:
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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?
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If we like a man’s dream, we call him a reformer; if we don’t like his dream, we call him a crank.
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No, no. I understand that. And I quite agree with you. But you know I’ve always contended that the affections could be made to combine pleasure and profit. I wouldn’t have a man marry for money, – that would be rather bad, – but I don’t see why, when it comes to falling in love, a man shouldn’t fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor one. Some of the rich girls are very nice, and I should.
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Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter what you do – but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven’t done so – and now I’m old. It’s too late. It has gone past me – I’ve lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!
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You’ll find as you grow older that you weren’t born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.
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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 barbarise.
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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.
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The secret of a man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested.
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