Babbitt Quotes & Sayings

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. — Sinclair Lewis

An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen. — Irving Babbitt

The papacy again, representing the traditional unity of European civilization, has also shown itself unable to limit effectively the push of nationalism. — Irving Babbitt

I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media. — Milton Babbitt

This isn't just about today, this about generations to come. And you've got a chance to be the greatest conservation President since Theodore Roosevelt, and I think he's done it. — Bruce Babbitt

I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life. — Natalie Babbitt

How old are you, anyway?' she asked, squinting at him.
There was a pause. At last he said, 'Why do you want to know?'
I just wondered,' said Winnie.
All right. I'm one hundred and four years old,' he told her solemnly.
No, I mean really,' she persisted.
Well then.' he said, 'if you must know, I'm seventeen.'
Seventeen?'
That's right.'
Oh,' said Winnie hopelessly. 'Seventeen. That's old.'
You have no idea,' he agreed with a nod. — Natalie Babbitt

I got a feeling this whole thing is going to come apart like wet bread. — Natalie Babbitt

A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism. — Irving Babbitt

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do. — Bruce Babbitt

What is your suggestion for someone who wants to start writing? Be a reader. It's the only real way to learn how to tell a story. — Natalie Babbitt

Very few of the early Italian humanists were really humane. — Irving Babbitt

The Northwest is in better shape than it was eight years ago. — Bruce Babbitt

The notion that big business and big labor and big government can sit down around a table somewhere and work out the direction of the American economy is at complete variance with the reality of where the American economy is headed. I mean, it's like dinosaurs gathering to talk about the evolution of a new generation of mammals. — Bruce Babbitt

The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world. — Natalie Babbitt

I am one of those people who deeply resents not having been born in the 19th century, when there were still open places to explore. — Bruce Babbitt

We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion. — Bruce Babbitt

We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our capital ... with God's creation. And we need to administer and work that very carefully. — Bruce Babbitt

Time is like a wheel. Turning and turning - never stopping. And the woods are the center; the hub of the wheel. It began the first week of summer, a strange and breathless time when accident, or fate, bring lives together. When people are led to do things, they've never done before. On this summer's day, not so very long ago, the wheel set lives in motion in mysterious ways. — Natalie Babbitt

And suddenly, she longed for a thunderstorm. — Natalie Babbitt

Protecting all this land, working with the President to establish all these monuments, to, you know ... I think the President has a land protection record that's second to no one in this century, maybe Teddy Roosevelt. — Bruce Babbitt

[B]elieving, was her own true, promising friend once more. — Natalie Babbitt

Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. — Sinclair Lewis

Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside. — Natalie Babbitt

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy. — Irving Babbitt

We went with the St. Lawrence Experience, which is run by Joe Babbitt, who is a close friend now. We went out there for 10 days and we had the best week of our lives, and we've been going back since. We've been back three times now. — Tom Felton

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful - most of the time - of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't - not a bit of it - be true. And yet: — Natalie Babbitt

A fresh breeze lifted Winnie's hair, and from somewhere in the village behind them a dog barked. — Natalie Babbitt

We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration. — Irving Babbitt

I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a book illustrator. I used to hurry home from school and draw. — Natalie Babbitt

You really have to love words if you're going to be a writer, because as a writer, you certainly spend a lot of time with words. — Natalie Babbitt

The democratic idealist is prone to make light of the whole question of standards and leadership because of his unbounded faith in the plain people. — Irving Babbitt

I forged more notes and my trips to the library became frequent. Reading grew into a passion. My first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify him as an American type. I would smile when I saw him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had always felt a vast distance separating me from the boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel the very limits of his narrow life. And this had happened because I had read a novel about a mythical man called George F. Babbitt. — Richard Wright

A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses. — Irving Babbitt

Nonsense. It's elves! — Natalie Babbitt

Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.
Tuck Everlasting — Natalie Babbitt

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama. — Irving Babbitt

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live. — Natalie Babbitt

No kidding. That's really true. You're paying your own bills through this. It's not a pleasant experience. — Bruce Babbitt

If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism. — Irving Babbitt

And soon they were rolling on again, leaving Treegap behind, and as they went, the tinkling little melody of a music box drifted out behind them and was lost at last far down the road. — Natalie Babbitt

And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother's shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because - in spite of everything, she loved them. — Natalie Babbitt

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths. — Natalie Babbitt

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection. — Irving Babbitt

The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy. — Irving Babbitt

The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old. — Natalie Babbitt

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. — Natalie Babbitt

Wordy! I enjoy description - I like words, and words are the tools that writers use, just like paint is the tool that artists use. I think words are fun, and I have a lot of fun using them. I know that a lot of kids think my stories start very slowly, and I expect that's true. But that's the way I like to read stories, so when I'm writing them I can do what I want! I say that to kids in schools, and they are very generous - they say, That's true. You can do what you want. It's your story. — Natalie Babbitt

and after saying good-by to him at the station, Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless. — Sinclair Lewis

Well, what I tried to do is simply to get out on the land. And when I came to Washington, I think one of the mistakes we made early on was kind of having an ideological dispute up in the Congress. — Bruce Babbitt

You've got nothing that lasts, you know. That's not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy? — Natalie Babbitt

You can't have living without dying. — Natalie Babbitt

Still-there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes. — Natalie Babbitt

The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give. — Natalie Babbitt

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple. — Natalie Babbitt

Dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life. — Natalie Babbitt

I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being. — Natalie Babbitt

Obviously I wouldn't have said that three or four years ago in the midst of it. But I really believe that. It's been a marvelous and important experience. — Bruce Babbitt

No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late. — Natalie Babbitt

But it's enough, just having this day. It's the knowing there's something different, something special up there waiting. It's the knowing you could choose to change your days
climb up there and throw yourself right down the throat of the only and last and greatest terrible secret in the world. Except you don't climb up. — Natalie Babbitt

She discovered the wings she never knew she had. — Natalie Babbitt

The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of sport. — Sinclair Lewis

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing? — Natalie Babbitt

What we've proven is that you can protect the environment, use it wisely and grow the economy and that there is no conflict between the two. — Bruce Babbitt

Look, I think by the time my case was over and other ones, everybody on both sides of the aisle in Congress said we can't run a government by this kind of process and they repealed the law and that's good. — Bruce Babbitt

Well, thought Winnie, crossing her arms on the windowsill, she was different. Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once. — Natalie Babbitt

Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment. — Irving Babbitt

It is like living in a wilderness of mirrors. No fact goes unchallenged. — Bruce Babbitt

The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel. — Sinclair Lewis

City parks serve, day in and day out, as the primary green spaces for the majority of Americans. — Bruce Babbitt

The idea that our son would be like Raymond Babbitt was a shocking reordering of everything. And something we couldn't quite fathom, really. — Ron Suskind

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type. — Irving Babbitt

I look back on it, yeah, I'm in a much worse financial position than I was eight years ago. I'm going to have to go out at age 62 and kind of readdress some of that. — Bruce Babbitt

When the world you're used to, that same old world you thought you knew so well, turns itself suddenly upside down, what can you do? Everything comes tumbling off the shelves of your expectations; nothing fits anymore. — Natalie Babbitt

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process. — Bruce Babbitt

For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual. — Irving Babbitt

I have always loved astronomy, and being an astronomer once lurked in the back of my mind. But I was never good at algebra. In fact, I flunked it twice in high school. — Natalie Babbitt

My mother was an artist, and I was fairly good at art as a child. I was always the best drawer in class, except in second grade when an artistic genius passed through our school! — Natalie Babbitt

They've really begun the war," he said to himself. "And all over a word in a dictionary, the ninnies! — Natalie Babbitt

Music is that great language where a lot can be said and little can be proven. — Milton Babbitt

My mother always found me out. Always. She's been dead for thirty-five years, but I have this feeling that even now she's watching. — Natalie Babbitt

We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up. — Bruce Babbitt

The first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for. — Natalie Babbitt

Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills; so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama. — Irving Babbitt

Midville's best street was High Street. It was up on a hill. Not much of a hill, to tell the truth, but in that part of the state, the flat south-central part, hills are not taken for granted. — Natalie Babbitt

Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn. — Irving Babbitt

I grew up wanting only to be an illustrator. I studied art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College. — Natalie Babbitt

What I finally did in 1995 was I said, I'm going to get out of this town and I'm going to go out West. — Bruce Babbitt

Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, one might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market. — Rebecca West

Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had. — Natalie Babbitt

Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself. — Irving Babbitt

I'm not exactly sure what I'd do,
you know
but something interesting -
something that's all mine
something that would make
some kind of difference in the world. — Natalie Babbitt

A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself spiritually the underdog. — Irving Babbitt

The Complete Jataka Tales, Ellen C. Babitt — Ellen C. Babbitt

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue. — Bruce Babbitt

The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose. — Natalie Babbitt

(I)n reading ... stories, you can be many different people in many different places, doing things you would never have a chance to do in ordinary life. It's amazing that those twenty-six little marks of the alphabet can arrange themselves on the pages of a book and accomplish all that. Readers are lucky - they will never be bored or lonely. — Natalie Babbitt

I think the people will- who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments. — Bruce Babbitt

I'm going to go out and get everybody together and say I think we ought to protect this for generations to come. Now, let's get down to work and walk the land and talk about the conflicts and get everybody involved. — Bruce Babbitt

That doesn't sound like civil war to me," said Gaylen, turning back to his book with a smile. "It only sounds silly."
"Of course it's silly," said the Prime Minister impatiently. "But a lot of serious things start silly. — Natalie Babbitt