Theodore Dreiser Quotes

She merely beamed a fatty beam. She was almost ponderous, and pink, with a tendency to a double chin.

Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life — he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers — neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other — a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth. In Carrie — as in how many of our worldlings do they not? — instinct and reason, desire and understanding, were at war for the mastery. She followed whither her craving led. She was as yet more drawn than she drew.

Chapter I The Philadelphia into which Frank Algernon Cowperwood was born was a city of two hundred and fifty thousand and more. It was set with handsome parks, notable buildings, and crowded with historic memories. Many of the things that we and he knew later were not then in existence — the telegraph, telephone, express company, ocean steamer, city delivery of mails.

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.

Нет греха слишком большого для милосердия Божьего.

Die Liebe einer Mutter zu ihren Kindern ist beherrschend, löwinnenhaft, selbstsüchtig und zugleich selbstlos […]. Die Liebe eines Vaters zu seinem Sohn oder seiner Tochter ist, wenn es sich überhaupt um Liebe handelt, ein weitherziges, großzügiges, schwermütiges und nachdenkliches Schenken ohne Hoffnung auf Erwiderung, ein Abschiedsgruß an einen geplagten Wanderer, den er gern beschützen möchte, ein richtig abgewogenes Urteil über Stärke und Schwäche, voll Mitleid für den Misserfolg und voll Stolz auf Erfolg.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.

She would never understand his craving for ease and luxury, for beauty, for love — his particular kind of love that went with show, pleasure, wealth, position, his eager and immutable aspirations and desires. She could not understand these things. She would look on all of it as sin — evil, selfishness. And in connection with all the fatal steps involving Roberta and Sondra, as adultery — unchastity — murder, even. And she would and did expect him to be terribly sorry and wholly repentant, when, even now, and for all he had said to the Reverend McMillan and to her, he could not feel so — not wholly so — although great was his desire now to take refuge in God, but better yet, if it were only possible, in her own understanding and sympathetic heart. If it were only possible.

A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy...

It is thus that life at its topmost toss irks and pains. Beyond is ever the unattainable, the lure of the infinite with its infinite ache.
- Oh, life! oh, youth! of, hope! oh, years! Oh pain-winged fancy, beating forth with fears.

And so you have the astounding and bitter spectacle, gentlemen, of a supposedly innocent and highly misunderstood young man dragging this weary and heart-sick girl from place to place, in order to find a lake deserted enough in which to drown her. And with her but four months from motherhood!

Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.

And so another miserable, black and weary night. And then another miserable gray and wintry morning.

"Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is. I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams?" (from My Brother Paul)

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.