Quotes by Logan Pearsall Smith

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

“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.”

“One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a ...”

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

“How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmaresif there seemed any danger of their coming true!”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.”

“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?”

“One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.”

“Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.”

“I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.”

“There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it.”