Logan Pearsall Smith

“The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.”

“We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.”

“When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.”

“Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.”

“Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.”

“Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

“There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.”

“The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.”

“A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.”

“Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.”

“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.”

“Many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!”

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.”

“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?”

“It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.”

“The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.”