Logan Pearsall Smith Quotes

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

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.

The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.

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

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

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

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

If it's to be, it's up to me.

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.

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

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

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

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

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

Give me a bed and a book and I am happy.

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

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

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income.

An improper mind is a perpetual feast.

There are few sorrows in which a good income is of no avail.

This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.

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?

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

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.

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