Logan Pearsall Smith

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

“Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither;—these make the finest company in the world.”

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

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

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

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

“What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!”

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

“Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.”

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

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

“What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest, those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.”

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

“All Reformers, however strict their Conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.”

“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he's only trying on one face after another till he finds his own.”

“Then I thought of reading—the nice and subtle happiness of reading. This was enough, this joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, life-long intoxication.”

“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.”

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

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