The wretchedness of being rich is that you 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
Topics: Riches, Wealth
You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion
I hate Spiders—I dislike all kinds of Insects. Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration of the Earth, the Sun’s waning, and the ultimate, inevitable collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Humanity
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
Topics: Friendship
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Dreams, Perspective
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
Topics: Just for Fun, Youth, Aging
What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
The lusts and greeds of the body scandalize the Soul; but it has to come to heel.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Soul, Greed
He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion
Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Night
All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Education
Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each others fur.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Happiness, Wine
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
Topics: Money
The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
I can’t forgive my friends for dying; I don’t find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Forgiveness, Friends and Friendship
What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Beauty
Don’t let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Youth, Aspirations
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Vanity
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
Topics: Success, Goals, Money, Happiness
There is one thing that matters—to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Life and Living
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Charm
The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection—even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano—is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Perfection, Understanding
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
Topics: Integrity, Age
If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Rest, Leisure
Eat with the rich, but go play with the poor, who are capable of joy.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Joy
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Age
The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Generations
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Work, Talents, Abilities
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Success, Courage
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Robertson Davies Canadian Novelist, Playwright
- Henry Adams American Historian
- Benjamin Jowett British Theologian
- Gore Vidal American Novelist
- Walt Whitman American Poet
- John Evelyn English Restoration Diarist
- Arnold J. Toynbee British Historian
- Matthew Arnold English Poet, Critic
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg German Philosopher, Physicist
- George Steiner American Culture Critic
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