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“You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Well, if that’s what you call being at peace, for heaven’s sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. ... He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“- What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and what is it? Float on flowery beds of ease? Think Man was just made to be happy?

- Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for!

- Well, we know not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a... well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?

- Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Babbitt knew that in this place of death Paul was already dead. And as he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavor, a pride in success.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith, especially in the “young married set,â€� there were many women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their “wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideasâ€� in unpaid social work, and still more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotismâ€� and “love of sport.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“and after saying good-by to him at the station, Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another’s movements than were the Bunch. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderance and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it. (p. 116)”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman, a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she was alive.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went through with it like the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils of tobacco, courageously made resolves, laid out plans to check the vice, tapered off his allowance of cigars, and expounded the pleasures of virtuousness to every one he met. He did everything, in fact, except stop smoking.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is—a business administration !”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“As to industrial conditions, however, Babbitt had thought a great deal, and his opinions may be coordinated as follows: "A good labor union is of value because it keeps out radical unions, which would destroy property. No one ought to be forced to belong to a union, however. All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged. In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every business man ought to belong to an employers'-association and to the Chamber of Commerce. In union there is strength. So any selfish hog who doesn't join the Chamber of Commerce ought to be forced to.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“He was the person whom, in any group, you forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“When Myra appeared she said at once, "Now, we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren't here." The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid merriment, "My! You're a regular bad one!" The second evening, she groaned sleepily, "Good heavens, are you going to be out every single night?" The third evening, he didn't play poker.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt