Logan Pearsall Smith Quotes

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want;

and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.

Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

Style is a magic wand, and turns everything to gold that it touches.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

When elderly invalids meet with fellow-victims of their own ailments, then at last real conversation begins, and life is delicious.

Don't laugh at youth for his affectations;

he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!

An echo of music, a face in the street, the wafer of the new moon, a wanton thought - only in the iridescence of things the vagabond soul is happy.

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets.

Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.

It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom.

I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives;

why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.

Many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!

The mere process of growing old together will make our slightest acquaintances seem like bosom friends.

There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.

We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.

So, I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents.

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.

How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

If they lost the incredible conviction that they can change their wives or husbands, marriage would collapse at once.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.

Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.

Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.

It's an odd thing about this universe that, though we all disagree with each other, we are all of us always in the right.

There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation.

The lusts and greeds of the body scandalize the Soul; but it has to come to heel.

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.