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
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
What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Beauty
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: Youth, Just for Fun, Aging
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Lies, Deception/Lying, Lying
Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament, not of income.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Wealth, Security, Safety
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Affection, Love
You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Soul
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
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Evil
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn’t a God.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: God, Focus, Money, Concentration
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
We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Friendship
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Abilities, Talents, Work
Eat with the rich, but go play with the poor, who are capable of joy.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Joy
Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Discovery
What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Enjoyment, Happiness
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Names, Integrity
It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Advice, Men
He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Fashion
A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Books
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
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Dreams, Perspective
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
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
Don’t tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Candor, Friendship, Forgiveness
The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
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
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Books, Reading
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
A best seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Talent
Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don’t have to go out and enjoy it.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Night
There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Men
The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Topics: Generations
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: Age, Integrity
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
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, Happiness, Money
The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
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
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