Logan Pearsall Smith, 1865 – 1946
Born: 18 October 1865, Millville, New Jersey
Died: 2 March 1946,
Pearsall Smith was born to prominent Quaker parents, his father’s family owned glass factories. He lived for a time in England but attended Haverford College (a Quaker school near Philadelphia) and Harvard College, then graduated in 1891 from Balliol College, Oxford. He remained in England, taking British citizenship in 1913. As far as I can tell, he spent the rest of his life writing, apparently slowly and carefully. That’s not entirely a bad thing, his epigrams are well polished gems. Note: If you have more detail, please use the error-reporting link at the bottom of the page.
Logan Pearsall Smith quotes:
A best seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
Logan Pearsall Smith
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Logan Pearsall Smith
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
Logan Pearsall Smith
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
All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
Logan Pearsall Smith
An improper mind is a perpetual feast.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
Logan Pearsall Smith
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.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Don’t tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Eat with the Rich, but go to the play with the Poor, who are capable of Joy.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
Logan Pearsall Smith
He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither, these make the finest company in the world.
Logan Pearsall Smith
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true.
Logan Pearsall Smith
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true.
Logan Pearsall Smith
How can they say my life isn’t a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
Logan Pearsall Smith
How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!
Logan Pearsall Smith
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
Logan Pearsall Smith
I can’t forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Logan Pearsall Smith – “Age and Death” in Afterthoughts (1931)
If we shake hands with icy fingers, it is because we’ve burnt them so hatefully before.
Logan Pearsall Smith
If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.
Logan Pearsall Smith
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
Logan Pearsall Smith
It is the dread of something happening, something unknown and dreadful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out.
Logan Pearsall Smith
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
Logan Pearsall Smith
It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Logan Pearsall Smith
One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.
Logan Pearsall Smith – “Other People” in Afterthoughts (1931)
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
Logan Pearsall Smith
