Happy birthday, Sinclair Lewis

From today's Quotes Of The Day

Sinclair Lewis was born at Sauk Centre, Minnesota on this day in 1885. He was an avid and somewhat romantic reader as a boy, he attempted to run away from home at age thirteen to be a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. He graduated from Yale in 1908 and set to work writing romantic poems and stories. He was awarded, but refused, a Pulitzer in 1926. He was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, a prize he accepted. The Nobel Committee praised "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters", but at least four of his novels were banned at various times.

There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.

He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is..."

When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.

When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

- All from Sinclair Lewis, 1885 - 1951