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

Inspirational Quotations 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

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Books

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

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

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Beauty

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

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: Aging, Just for Fun, Youth

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

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Autobiography, Legacy

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Love, Affection

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art

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
Topics: Living, Eating, Success, Blessings

One’s own vanities and humiliations I find a delicious subject for conversation. Things said of me behind my back I don’t enjoy, and don’t listen to them.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Gossip

If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Rest, Leisure

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

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: Courage, Success

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

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

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

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

How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Prejudice

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

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

One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Boredom

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

What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Writing

I can’t forgive my friends for dying; I don’t find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Forgiveness

Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Night

A best seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Talent

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