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.
Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.
Love is the only thing you can really give in all this world. When you give love, you give everything.
We are to have no pictures which the puritan and the narrow, animated by an obsolete dogma, cannot approve of. We are to have no theaters no motion pictures, no books, no public exhibitions of any kind, no speech even which will anyway contravene his limited view of life.
Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.
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.
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.
A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o’-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.
And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must succeed. That’s what the world was made for. That’s what he was made for. That was what he would have to do.
Remember, love is all a woman has to give, but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave.
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.
Nothing is proved, all is permitted.
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.
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.
I believe in the compelling power of love.
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.
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.
Theodore Dreiser Should ought to write nicer.
All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.
How dismal is progress without publicity.