Logan Pearsall Smith

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

“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.”

“Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.”

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

“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?”

“Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.”

“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.”

“Married women are kept women, and they are beginning to find it out.”

“The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.”

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

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

“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?”

“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?”

“It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

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

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