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
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.
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.
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.
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.
beauty dust strikes
I will kneel and strike my breast, then touch the dust with my forehead; I will, I will. Only do not forsake me, oh god of beauty.
color world
A thought will color a world for us.
last-words
Shakespeare, I come !
success air hands
I have seen youths bright eyed and fair groping after bubbles in rapture, and conceiving them diamonds and the glitter of fine jewels, until their hand closed over a something that was not to be felt nor longer seen, mere colored air.
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.
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.
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
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.
might waking energy
The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.