Quotes from Norman Douglas

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.

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

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

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

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

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

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

The law does not content itself with classifying and punishing crime. It invents crime.

They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves.

The older I get," observed Mr. van Koppen, "the more I realize that everything depends upon what a man postulates. The rest is plain sailing.

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

Mr. Frederick Parker spent a good deal of his time in endeavouring to mask, under a cloak of boisterous good humour, a really remarkable combination of malevolence and imbecility.

Everybody overstates his case, particularly when he is anxious to do something which he considers useful.

Mr. Keith, by means of some mysterious formula, soon procured two seats in the front row, the occupants of which smilingly took their places among the crowd at the back.

We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training. So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it—where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future.