Theodore Dreiser

Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.

I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

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.