William Dean Howells Quotes

The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.

He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.

All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisisan may still do it. But we, who must live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

If a book is true to what men and women know of one another’s souls it will be true enough, and it will be great and beautiful.

The instinctive sense of the dishonor which money-purchase does to art is so strong that sometimes a man of letters who can pay his way otherwise refuses pay for his work, as Lord Byron did, for a while, from a noble pride, and as Count Tolstoy has tried to do, from a noble conscience.

An author whose name is known everywhere, and whose reputation is commensurate with the boundaries of his country, if it does not transcend them, shall have the income, say, of a rising young physician, known to a few people in a subordinate city. In view of this fact, so humiliating to an author in the […]

I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from fine physical state. It cannot be brought. But it is the keenest joy, after all; and the toiler’s truest and best […]