Theodore DreiserThinkers

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

Chicago is a poet in chaps and buckskin, this rude, raw titan, this burns of a city! By its shimmering lake it lay, a king of shreds and patches, a maundering yokel with an epic in its mouth, a tramp, a hobo among cities, with the grip of caesar in its mind, the dramatic force of euripides in its soul. A very bard of a city this, singing of high deeds and high hopes, its heavy brogans buried deep in the mire ol circumstance.

Chicago is so strong, so rough, so shabby and yet so vital and determined it is like a young giant afraid of nothing.

Civilization is today 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.

Life is a God-damned. stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of thousand are bastards.

The Press is kept by a rich man.

Religion is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.