Norman Douglas Quotes

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him...two.

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

The secret of happiness is curiosity

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

Has any man ever obtained inner harmony by simply reading about the experiences of others? Not since the world began has it ever happened. Each man must go through the fire himself.

The business of life is to enjoy oneself; everything else is a mockery.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Learn to foster an ardent imagination; so shall you descry beauty which others passed unheeded.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.

The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? But the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong.

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.

Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.

The longer one lives, the more one realizes that nothing is a dish for every day.

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.

You can cram a truth into an epigram - the truth, never.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.