1
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.Logan Pearsall Smith
2
The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.Logan Pearsall Smith
3
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
4
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.Logan Pearsall Smith
5
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmaresif there seemed any danger of their coming true!Logan Pearsall Smith
6
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.Logan Pearsall Smith
7
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.Logan Pearsall Smith
8
One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.Logan Pearsall Smith
9
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.Logan Pearsall Smith
10
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?Logan Pearsall Smith
11
I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.Logan Pearsall Smith
12
There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want and after that to enjoy it.Logan Pearsall Smith
13
How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years gotten enough to eat and escaped being eaten?Logan Pearsall Smith
14
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 an ideal version of their lives.Logan Pearsall Smith
15
Don't tell your friends their social faults they will cure the fault and never forgive you.Logan Pearsall Smith
16
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
17
The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.Logan Pearsall Smith
18
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
19
Married women are kept women and they are beginning to find it out.Logan Pearsall Smith
20
The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.Logan Pearsall Smith
21
An improper mind is a perpetual feast.Logan Pearsall Smith
22
Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.Logan Pearsall Smith
23
What humbugs we are who pretend to live for Beauty and never see the Dawn!Logan Pearsall Smith
24
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm and behave as outrageously as the world will let them.Logan Pearsall Smith
25
How it infuriates a bigot when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!Logan Pearsall Smith
26
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.Logan Pearsall Smith
27
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.Logan Pearsall Smith
28
Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament not of income.Logan Pearsall Smith
29
Self-respecting people do not care to peep at their reflections in unexpected mirrors or to see themselves as others see them.Logan Pearsall Smith
30
There are few sorrows however poignant in which a good income is of no avail.Logan Pearsall Smith
31
How can they say my life isn't a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?Logan Pearsall Smith
32
How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?Logan Pearsall Smith
33
What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.Logan Pearsall Smith
34
Every author however modest keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.Logan Pearsall Smith
35
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
36
What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.Logan Pearsall Smith
37
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.Logan Pearsall Smith
38
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.Logan Pearsall Smith
39
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.Logan Pearsall Smith
40
We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.Logan Pearsall Smith
41
The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.Logan Pearsall Smith
42
The old know what they want the young are sad and bewildered.Logan Pearsall Smith
43
It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.Logan Pearsall Smith