Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiserwas an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrieand An American Tragedy. In 1930 he was nominated to the Nobel Prize in Literature...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 August 1871
CityTerre Haute, IN
love rooms chemicals
You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It's chemical. What are you going to do about it?
believe power-of-love compelling
I believe in the compelling power of love.
important pawns individual
It isn't myself that's important in this transaction apparently; the individual doesn't count much in the situation...all of us are more or less pawns. We're moved about like chessmen by circumstances over which we have no control.
love-you love-is giving
Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.
civilization intuition beast
Our civilization 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.
ignorance order
In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.
art sadness wings
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
mean feelings together
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
strong desire tragedy
Life is made for the strong. There is no mercy in it for the weak– none...Such is the tragedy of desire.
lying heart talking
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
thinking joy plans
If we are to extract any joy out of our span, we must think and plan and make things better not only for ourselves but for others, since joy for ourselves depends upon our joy in others and theirs in us.
strong business men
The strong man wants to be allowed to DO; the little man wants to stop him.
writing unconquerable urges
If you have that unconquerable urge to write, nothing will stop you from writing.
sunshine color desire
Innate sensuousness rarely has any desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate.