Delphi Collected Works of Theodore Dreiser (Illustrated)
Theodore Dreiser
Top 10 Best Quotes
“we have but an infantile perception of morals. There is more in the subject than mere conformity to a law of evolution. It is yet deeper than conformity to things of earth alone. It is more involved than we, as yet, perceive. Answer, first, why the heart thrills; explain wherefore some plaintive note goes wandering about the world, undying; make clear the rose’s subtle alchemy evolving its ruddy lamp in light and rain. In the essence of these facts lie the first principles of morals. “Oh,” thought Drouet, “how delicious is my conquest.” “Ah,” thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, “what is it I have lost?”
“the practice of medicine in a large and kindly way had led him to the conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies and in our small neighborhood relationships.”
“she was no common girl, no toy of the passing hour.”
“know too well that I am but taking to my arms a variable creature like myself, whose wishes are apt to become insistent and burdensome in proportion to the decrease of her beauty and interest?” These are the men, who, unwilling to risk the manifold contingencies of an authorized connection, are led to consider the advantages of a less-binding union, a temporary companionship. They seek to seize the happiness of life without paying the cost of their indulgence.”
“girl like Jennie is like a comfortable fire to the average masculine mind; they gravitate to it, seek its sympathy, yearn to possess it. Hence she was annoyed by many unwelcome attentions.”
“all beauty were passing, and you were given these things to hold in your arms before the world slipped away, would you give them up?”
“You have heard the wood-dove calling in the lone stillness of the summertime; you have found the unheeded brooklet singing and babbling where no ear comes to hear. Under dead leaves and snow-banks the delicate arbutus unfolds its simple blossom, answering some heavenly call for color. So, too, this other flower of womanhood. Jennie was left alone, but, like the wood-dove, she was a voice of sweetness in the summer-time. Going about her household duties, she was content to wait, without a murmur, the fulfilment of that process for which, after all, she was but the sacrificial implement.”
“You get the same thing in a pathetic song, or any picture which moves you deeply. It’s a thing the world likes to see, because it’s a natural expression of its longing.” Carrie gazed without exactly getting the import of what he meant. “The world is always struggling to express itself,” he went on. “Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings. They depend upon others. That is what genius is for. One man expresses their desires for them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play. Sometimes nature does it in a face — it makes the face representative of all desire. That’s what has happened in your case.”
“When we are cast from a group or a condition we have still the companionship of all that is. Nature is not ungenerous. Its winds and stars are fellows with you. Let the soul be but gentle and receptive, and this vast truth will come home — not in set phrases, perhaps, but as a feeling, a comfort, which, after all, is the last essence of knowledge. In the universe peace is wisdom.”
“When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.”
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