Quotes from Logan Pearsall Smith

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!

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.

Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither;—these make the finest company in the world.

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he's only trying on one face after another till he finds his own.

Thank heavens, the sun has gone in and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.

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

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest, those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.

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

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

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consists in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!

All Reformers, however strict their Conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

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

Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent

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.

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave just as outrageously as the world allows.

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

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

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

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

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.

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