Sherwood Anderson

Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved.

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Here and there a man respected the operator. Instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment of something he had not the courage to resent.

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To the young man a kind of worship of some power outside himself is essential. one has strength and enthusiasm and wants gods to worship.

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People keep on getting married. Evidently hope is eternal in the human breast.

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In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. I have come to this lonely place and here is this other, was the substance of the thing felt.

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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.

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In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. I have come to this lonely place and here is this other, was the substance of the thing felt.

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Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved.

Read quote

To the young man a kind of worship of some power outside himself is essential. one has strength and enthusiasm and wants gods to worship.

Read quote

People keep on getting married. Evidently hope is eternal in the human breast.

Read quote

Here and there a man respected the operator. Instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment of something he had not the courage to resent.

Read quote

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.

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What's wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?

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Everyone in the world is Christ, and they are all crucified.

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I think that those of us who are what are called intellectuals make a terrible mistake in overvaluing the yen we have for the arts, books, etc. There is a sweet, fine quality in life that has nothing to do with this, and more and more I find myself valuing myself with those people.

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Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified.

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The disease we all have and that we have to fight against all our lives is ... the disease of self ...

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Quotes by Sherwood Anderson