Smith, Logan Pearsall
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Smith, Logan Pearsall
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Decay
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Conscience
A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Books - Bestsellers
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Charm
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Dreams
He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Fashion
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Evil
I can t forgive my friends for dying; I don t find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Friends and Friendship
There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Life and Living
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Gossip
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.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Goals
The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Generations
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn t a God.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
God
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Happiness
Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don t have to go out and enjoy it.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Night
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Lies and Lying
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Ideals and Idealism
Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Meaning of Life
If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Leisure
What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they ve taken away?
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Joy
The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection --even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano --is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Perfection
That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Preachers and Preaching
The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. 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 stay sober.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Riches
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Soul
We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Acquaintance
The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Acquaintance
How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Bigotry
Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Books - Reading
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Books - Reading
The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Arts and Artists
What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Autobiography
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.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Education
What s more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can t hear what they say?
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Children
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Affection
There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Baldness
What I like in a good author isn t what he says, but what he whispers.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Writers and Writing
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Youth
Don t let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Youth
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Vocation
Don t laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Youth
Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Smith, Logan Pearsall
Writers and Writing