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What Things There Are To Write, If One Could Only Write Them! My Mind Is Full Of Gleaming Thought; Gay Moods And Mysterious, Moth-like Meditations Hover In My Imagination, Fanning Their Painted Wings. But Always The Rarest, Those Streaked With Azure And The Deepest Crimson, Flutter Away Beyond My Reach.

-Logan Pearsall Smith

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What Things There Are

Logan Pearsall Smith

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What Things There Are To Write, If One Could Only Write Them! My Mind Is Full Of Gleaming Thought; Gay Moods And Mysterious, Moth-like Meditations Hover In My Imagination, Fanning Their Painted Wings. But Always The Rarest, Those Streaked With Azure And The Deepest Crimson, Flutter Away Beyond My Reach.

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All Our Lives We Are Putting Pennies — Our Most Golden Pennies — Into Penny-in-the-slot Machines That Are Almost Always Empty.

The Truth Is That The Phenomena Of Artistic Production Are Still So Obscure, So Baffling, We Are Still So Far From An Accurate Scientific And Psychological Knowledge Of Their Genesis Or Meaning, That We Are Forced To Accept Them As Empirical Facts; And Empirical And Non-explanatory Names Are The Names That Suit Them Best.

One Can Be Bored Until Boredom Becomes A Mystical Experience.

Mystical Experiences

Youth Is The Time For Adventures Of The Body, But Age For The Triumphs Of The Mind.

Don't Tell Friends Their Social Faults; They Will Cure The Fault And Never Forgive You.

It Is Through The Cracks In Our Brains That Ecstasy Creeps In.

All Reformers, However Strict Their Social Conscience, Live In Houses Just As Big As They Can Pay For.

How Many Of Our Daydreams Would Darken Into Nightmares If There Seemed Any Danger Of Their Coming True!

Dreaming About You

So, I Never Lose A Sense Of The Whimsical And Perilous Charm Of Daily Life, With Its Meetings And Words And Accidents.

If They Lost The Incredible Conviction That They Can Change Their Wives Or Husbands, Marriage Would Collapse At Once.

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.

Eat With The Rich, But Go To The Play With The Poor, Who Are Capable Of Joy.

An Improper Mind Is A Perpetual Feast.

A Best-seller Is The Gilded Tomb Of A Mediocre Talent

I Like To Walk Down Bond Street, Thinking Of All The Things I Don't Desire.

Don't Let Young People Tell You Their Aspirations; When They Drop Them They Will Drop You.

You Cannot Be Both Fashionable And First-rate

Friends Such As We Desire Are Dreams And Fables, Yet We Never Quite Give Up The Hope Of Finding Them.

The Ladies Who Try To Keep Their Beauty Are The Ladies Who Lose It.

We Grow With Years More Fragile In Body, But Morally Stutter, And Can Throw Off The Chill Of A Bad Conscience Almost At Once.

He Who Goes Against The Fashion Is Himself Its Slave

One's Own Vanities And Humiliations I Find A Delicious Subject For Conversation. Things Said Of Me Behind My Back I Don't Enjoy, And Don't Listen To Them.

What Humbugs We Are, Who Pretend To Live For Beauty, And Never See The Dawn!

Solvency Is Entirely A Matter Of Temperament And Not Of Income.

It Is A Matter Of Life And Death For Married People To Interrupt Each Others Stories; For It They Did Not, They Would Burst.

Hearts That Are Delicate And Kind And Tongues That Are Neither - These Make The Finest Company In The World.

What Shall I Compare It To, This Fantastic Thing I Call My Mind? To A Waste-paper Basket, To A Sieve Choked With Sediment, Or To A Barrel Full Of Floating Froth And Refuse? No, What It Is Really Most Like Is A Spider's Web, Insecurely Hung On Leaves And Twigs, Quivering In Every Wind, And Sprinkled With Dewdrops And Dead Flies. And At Its Centre, Pondering Forever The Problem Of Existence, Sits Motionless The Spider-like And Uncanny Soul.

It Is The Wretchedness Of Being Rich That You Have To Live With Rich People.

To Become Young Again Would Seem To Me An Appalling Prospect. Youth Is A Kind Of Delirium, Which Can Be Cured, If It Is Ever Cured At All, By Years Of Painful Treatment.

Whiskey Has Killed More Men Than Bullets, But Most Men Would Rather Be Full Of Whiskey Than Bullets.

There Are People Who, Like Houses, Are Beautiful In Dilapidation.

I Can't Forgive My Friends For Dying; I Don't Find These Vanishing Acts Of Theirs At All Amusing.

Growing Old Is Not A Gradual Decline, But A Series Of Drops, Full Of Sorrow, From One Ledge To Another Below It.

I Might Give My Life For My Friend, But He Had Better Not Ask Me To Do Up A Parcel.

What Things There Are To Write, If One Could Only Write Them! My Mind Is Full Of Gleaming Thought; Gay Moods And Mysterious, Moth-like Meditations Hover In My Imagination, Fanning Their Painted Wings. But Always The Rarest, Those Streaked With Azure And The Deepest Crimson, Flutter Away Beyond My Reach.

The Old Know What They Want; The Young Are Sad And Bewildered.

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.

When We Say We Are Certain So-and-so Can't Possibly Have Done It, What We Mean Is That We Think He Very Likely Did.

It's An Odd Thing About This Universe That, Though We All Disagree With Each Other, We Are All Of Us Always In The Right.

If You Want To Be Thought A Liar, Always Tell The Truth

We Should Nourish Our Souls On The Dew Of Poesy, And Manure Them As Well.

Most People Sell Their Souls, And Live With A Good Conscience On The Proceeds.

Uncultivated Minds Are Not Full Of Wild Flowers, Like Uncultivated Fields. Villainous Weeds Grow In Them And They Are The Haunt Of Toads.

How It Infuriates A Bigot, When He Is Forced To Drag Out His Dark Convictions!

Our Names Are Labels, Plainly Printed On The Bottled Essence Of Our Past Behavior.

The Vitality Of A New Movement In Art Must Be Gauged By The Fury It Arouses.

People Before The Public Live An Imagined Life In The Thought Of Others, And Flourish Or Feel Faint As Their Self Outside Themselves Grows Bright Or Dwindles In That Mirror.

All Mirrors Are Magical Mirrors, And We Never See Our Faces In Them.

What Joy Can The Years Bring Half So Sweet As The Unhappiness They've Taken Away?

The Denunciation Of The Young Is A Necessary Part Of The Hygiene Of Older People, And Greatly Assists The Circulation Of The Blood.

This Nice And Subtle Happiness Of Reading, This Joy Not Chilled By Age, This Polite And Unpunished Vice, This Selfish, Serene Life-long Intoxication.

How Awful To Reflect That What People Say Of Us Is True!

There Are Few Sorrows In Which A Good Income Is Of No Avail.

But Why Wasn't I Born, Alas, In An Age Of Adjectives; Why Can One No Longer Write Of Silver-shedding Tears And Moon-tailed Peacocks, Of Eloquent Death, Of The Negro And Star-enameled Night?

We Need New Friends; Some Of Us Are Cannibals Who Have Eaten Their Old Friends Up; Others Must Have Ever-renewed Audiences Before Whom To Re-enact The Ideal Version Of Their Lives.

What Is More Mortifying Than To Feel That You Have Missed The Plum For Want Of Courage To Shake The Tree?

Only Those Who Get Into Scrapes With Their Eyes Open Can Find The Safe Way Out.

Money And Sex Are Forces Too Unruly For Our Reason; They Can Only Be Controlled By Taboos With Which We Tamper At Our Peril.

Those Who Talk On The Razor-edge Of Double-meanings Pluck The Rarest Blooms From The Precipice On Either Side.

Meaning Of Life

Happiness Is A Wine Of The Rarest Vintage, And Seems Insipid To A Vulgar Taste.

Those Who Set Out To Serve Both God And Mammon Soon Discover That There Isn't A God.

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 Slight Touch Of Friendly Malice And Amusement Towards Those We Love Keeps Our Affections For Them From Turning Flat.

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?

The Word Snob Belongs To The Sour-grape Vocabulary.

Thank Heavens, The Sun Has Gone In And I Don’t Have To Go Out And Enjoy It.

I Am One Of The Unpraised, Unrewarded Millions Without Whom Statistics Would Be A Bankrupt Science. It Is We Who Are Born, Who Marry, Who Die, In Constant Ratios.

People Say That Life Is The Thing, But I Prefer Reading.

Style Is A Magic Wand, And Turns Everything To Gold That It Touches.

People Have A Right To Be Shocked; The Mention Of Unmentionable Things Is A Kind Of Participation In Them.

If You Are Losing Your Leisure, Look Out! You Are Losing Your Soul.

We Need Two Kinds Of Acquaintances, One To Complain To, While To The Others We Boast.

Don't Laugh At Youth For His Affectations; He Is Only Trying On One Face After Another To Find His Own.

If It's To Be, It's Up To Me.

The Test Of A Vocation Is The Love Of The Drudgery It Involves.

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.

An Echo Of Music, A Face In The Street, The Wafer Of The New Moon, A Wanton Thought - Only In The Iridescence Of Things The Vagabond Soul Is Happy.

There Is More Felicity On The Far Side Of Baldness Than Young Men Can Possibly Imagine.

If We Shake Hands With Icy Fingers, It Is Because We Have Burnt Them So Horribly Before.

Married Women Are Kept Women, And Theyare Beginning To Find It Out.

What I Like In A Good Author Is Not What He Says But What He Whispers.

Self-respecting People Do Not Care To Peep At Their Reflections In Unexpected Mirrors, Or To See Themselves As Others See Them.

The Indefatigable Pursuit Of An Unattainable Perfection -even Though Nothing More Than The Pounding Of An Old Piano -is What Alone Gives A Meaning To Our Life On This Unavailing Star.

When Elderly Invalids Meet With Fellow-victims Of Their Own Ailments, Then At Last Real Conversation Begins, And Life Is Delicious.

Charming People Live Up To The Very Edge Of Their Charm, And Behave As Outrageously As The World Will Let Them.

I Find A Fascination, Like The Fascination For The Moth Of A Star, In Those Who Hold Aloof And Disdain Me.

The Great Art Of Writing Is The Art Of Making People Real To Themselves With Words.

Fine Writers Should Split Hairs Together, And Sit Side By Side, Like Friendly Apes, To Pick The Fleas From Each Others Fur.

When They Come Downstairs From Their Ivory Towers, Idealists Are Very Apt To Walk Straight Into The Gutter.

The Test Of Enjoyment Is The Remembrance Which It Leaves Behind.

Only Among People Who Think No Evil Can Evil Monstrously Flourish.

There Are People Whose Society I Find Delicious; But When I Sit Alone And Think Of Them I Shudder.

A Friend Who Loved Perfection Would Be The Perfect Friend, Did Not That Love Shut His Door On Me.

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?

Every Author, However Modest, Keeps A Most Outrageous Vanity Chained Like A Madman In The Padded Cell Of His Breast.

The Mere Process Of Growing Old Together Will Make The Slightest Acquaintance Seem A Bosom Friend.

The World Is Not Unkind, And Reprobates Are Worse Than Their Reputations.

Give Me A Bed And A Book And I Am Happy.

But Man Is Above All A Social And Political Animal; His Relations With His Fellow Human Beings Form His Most Absorbing And Important Interest.

The Lusts And Greeds Of The Body Scandalize The Soul; But It Has To Come To Heel.

For Souls In Growth, Great Quarrels Are Great Emancipations.

How Often My Soul Visits The National Gallery, And How Seldom

The Emergence Of A New Term To Describe A Certain Phenomenon, Of A New Adjective To Designate A Certain Quality, Is Always Of Interest, Both Linguistically And From The Point Of View Of The History Of Human Thought.

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