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Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs. Esther Dyson		Friday Mar 13, 2026
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing. Logan Pearsall Smith

Quote Author: Logan Pearsall Smith

Logan Pearsall Smith

Logan Pearsall Smith

Logan Pearsall Smith (October 18, 1865 - March 2, 1946) was an American essayist and critic.

Smith was born in Millville, New Jersey and settled in London. He was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, but is now probably most remembered for his autobiography Unforgotten Years (1938).

The son of the prominent Quakers Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith, Logan attended Haverford College and Balliol College, Oxford. His sister Alys was the first wife of Bertrand Russell, and his sister Mary married Bernard Berenson.

Smith was much influenced by Walter Pater. His followers included Robert Gathorne-Hardy, Desmond MacCarthy, John Russell, R. C. Trevelyan, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He was, in part, the basis for the character of Nick Greene / Sir Nicholas Greene in Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

Other Logan Pearsall Smith Quotes

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

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

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

How often my Soul visits the National Gallery, and how seldom I go there myself!

Married women are kept women, and they are beginning to find out.

The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

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?

An aphorism is [that which] drags from obscurity a recognizable intuition by clothing it in words.

Aphorisms are salted not sugared almonds at Reasons Feast.

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

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.

It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

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

There is one thing that matters to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.

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

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.

Isn't it odd that flowers are the reproductive organs of the plants they grow on?

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

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

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

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

If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul.

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than 60 years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

A Tribute to Logan Pearsall Smith by Cyril Connolly: Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. 'Yes,' he replied, '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.'

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

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.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

If we're told that an odd piece of our china is worth a hundred pounds, how rare its beauty!

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.

That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.

The wretchedness of being rich is that you 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.

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

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

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

It is almost worth while to be cheated; people's little frauds have an interest which amply repays what they cost us.

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!

Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each other's fur.

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

Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they will drop you.