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
girl fall home
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
want terrible sad-things
It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp.
love-is giving remember
Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.
eye men desire
When a man, however passively, becomes an obstacle to the fulfillment of a woman's desires, he becomes an odious thing in her eyes, - or will, given time enough.
eye power heaven
Your writer, your scientist, your chief official, all have lost the power to revive the early illusion concerning fame and high place. Their beauty and delight is like the mirage in the heavens, only plain to the eye outside; within is nothing.
dream nature real
Nature, machine-like, works definitely and heartlessly, if in the main beautifully. Hence, if we, as individuals, do not make this dream of a god or what he stands for us real in our thoughts and deeds, then he is not real or true.
evil reactions distress
Depend upon it; from every condition of distress or evil, there is a great reaction, and the greater the distress or evil, the greater the reaction.
fighting swings hands
We who feel that justice is not being done have but one thing to do: that is fight, by argument, by example, by insistence on fair play wherever we have the power to do so. The rest is in the hands of the Lord, or nature, which swings, apparently, from one extreme to another.
football strong winning
Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.
delight territory next
To the untraveled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love it is the one thing that solaces and delights.
race evil faces
The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.
moon light hay
Oh, the moon is fair tonight along the Wabash, From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay; Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming On the banks of the Wabash, far away.
remains true-meaning
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.
women torment
Why must women torment me so?