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
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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