Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)

Lloyd Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) was an American-born British essayist and critic. He was known for his aphorisms and epigrams and was an expert on 17th-century divines.

Born in Millville, New Jersey, Smith got educated at Haverford College, Harvard University, and Oxford’s Balliol College. He resided in England and on continental Europe after 1888. Becoming a British subject in 1913, he devoted himself to the study of literature and the rules of the English language. His circle of literary friends included Roger Fry, Henry James, and Cyril Connolly. One of his sisters married the philosopher Bertrand Russell, another married the art historian Bernard Berenson.

Smith’s books of aphorisms and essays include Trivia (1902,) More Trivia (1921,) Afterthoughts (1931,) the collection All Trivia (1933,) and Reperusals and Re-collections (1936.) His Words and Idioms (1933) made him an authority on English language usage. He also published collections of short stories, poetry, pamphlets, and biographies. Milton and His Modern Critics (1941) is a defense of John Milton and an attack on T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound for their denigration of Milton.

Smith’s autobiography, Unforgotten Years (1938,) describes his Quaker childhood, his acquaintance with poet Walt Whitman, his accomplishments as a bibliophile, and his experiences as an expatriate.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Logan Pearsall Smith

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: Money, Goals, Happiness, Success

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Dreams, Perspective

Eat with the rich, but go play with the poor, who are capable of joy.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Joy

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Logan Pearsall Smith

What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they’ve taken away?
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Excitement, Joy

That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Preaching, Evangelism

It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Advice, Men

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lying, Lies

Don’t let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Aspirations, Youth

The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Happiness, Enjoyment

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Hypocrisy

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: Understanding, Perfection

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Gossip

There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Men

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
Topics: Reading, Books

Don’t tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Candor, Friendship, Forgiveness

You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion

There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Money

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Evil

Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Integrity, Names

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Generations

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

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament, not of income.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Security, Wealth, Safety

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

What’s more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can’t hear what they say?
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Children

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
Topics: Affectation, Youth

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Work, Talents, Abilities

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn’t a God.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Money, Focus, God, Concentration

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

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