Logan Pearsall Smith Quotes

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Age and Death, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Other People, 1931)

Eat with the Rich, but go to the play with the Poor, who are capable of Joy.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Quoted in A Chime of Words: The Letters of Logan Pearsall Smith, 1984)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

If we shake hands with icy fingers, it is because we've burnt them so hatefully before.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Age and Death, 1931)

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?

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Myself, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Other People, 1931)

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep absolutely sober.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - In the World, 1931)

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Quoted in the Recollections of Logan Pearsall Smith, 1949)

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.

Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Myself, 1931)

Oh dear, this living and eating and growing old; these doubts and aches in the back, and want of interest in the Moon and Roses… Am I the person who used to wake in the middle of the night and laugh with the joy of living? Who worried about the existence of God, and danced with young ladies till long after daybreak? Who sang "Auld Lang Syne" and howled with sentiment, and more than once gazed at the summer stars through a blur of great, romantic tears?

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Art and Letters, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

That we should practise what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practise must incur the gravest moral disapprobation. 

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

There is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people. 

Logan Pearsall Smith (When asked if he feels that there is any meaning to life)

"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Age and Death, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Other People, 1931)

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Age and Death, 1931)

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

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

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Art and Letters, 1931)

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consists in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables, yet we never quite give up the hope of finding them.

Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words, 1933)

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.

Logan Pearsall Smith (Afterthoughts - Life and Human Nature, 1931)

Logan Pearsall Smith Biography

Born: October 18, 1865
Died: March 2, 1946

Logan Pearsall Smith was an American essayist and critic. He is best known for his aphorisms and his autobiography.

Notable Works

Afterthoughts (1931)
All Trivia (1933)
On Reading Shakespeare (1933)
The Unforgotten Years (1938)