Quotes of Sherwood Anderson - somelinesforyou

“ In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [...] There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself. The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces. There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.... The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live.... You won't arrive. It is an endless search. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ LeRoy explained her attitude in the matter and her strange behavior in the west-side house by saying she had thought too much and acted too little. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ His life has been spent in devotion to ideas. The passions of his brain have consumed the passions of his body. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant we ran rather than loitered. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ It has long been my desire to be a little worm in the fair apple of Progress. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ Interest in the lives of others, the high evaluation of these lives, what are they but the overflow of the interest a man finds in himself, the value he attributes to his own being? ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ His life has been spent in devotion to ideas. The passions of his brain have consumed the passions of his body. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ His life has been spent in devotion to ideas. The passions of his brain have consumed the passions of his body. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ General Grant had a simple, child-like recipe for meeting life… "I am terribly afraid, but the other fellow is afraid, too.". ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ It has long been my desire to be a little worm in the fair apple of Progress. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ Work accomplished means little. It is in the past. What we all want is the glorious and living present. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ General Grant had a simple, child-like recipe for meeting life… "I am terribly afraid, but the other fellow is afraid, too.". ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ General Grant had a simple, child-like recipe for meeting life… "I am terribly afraid, but the other fellow is afraid, too.". ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson

“ I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them. ”

- Sherwood Anderson
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