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.
The mere process of growing old together will make our slightest acquaintances seem like bosom friends.
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
Eat with the Rich, but go to the play with the Poor, who are capable of Joy.
Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
If we shake hands with icy fingers, it is because we've burnt them so hatefully before.
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?
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
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.
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.
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.
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
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?
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.
Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.
It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.
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.
The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
There is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
"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.
I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
Many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
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.
Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables, yet we never quite give up the hope of finding them.
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.