Logan Pearsall Smith

It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.

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Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.

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

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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.

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What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?

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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.

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Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

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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.

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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.

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How often my soul visits the National Gallery, and how seldom

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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?

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When elderly invalids meet with fellow-victims of their own ailments, then at last real conversation begins, and life is delicious.

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

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One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.

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One can be bored until boredom becomes the most sublime of all emotions.

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I like to walk down Bond Street, thinking of all the things I don't desire.

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All our affirmations are mere matters of chronology; and even our bad taste is nothing more than the bad taste of the age we live in.

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People have a right to be shocked; the mention of unmentionable things is a kind of participation in them.

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So, I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents.

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Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave just as outrageously as the world will let them.

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Quotes by Logan Pearsall Smith