Logan Pearsall Smith

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!

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

All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

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 keep absolutely sober.

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

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

I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income.

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.

What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?

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

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

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consists in nothing more than the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives meaning to our life on this unavailing star.