Logan Pearsall Smith > Quotes

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Then I thought of reading—the nice and subtle happiness of reading. This was enough, this joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, life-long intoxication.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither;—these make the finest company in the world.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he's only trying on one face after another till he finds his own.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Thank heavens, the sun has gone in and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“All Reformers, however strict their Conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith

“A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant and sad—into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum—I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus.
Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and sorrow, and anger.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words

“Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave just as outrageously as the world allows.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts

“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.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts

“People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith

“We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.”
― Logan Pearsall Smith, All trivia: Trivia, More trivia, Afterthoughts, Last words