Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.

His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.