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. Logan Pearsall Smith More Quotes by Logan Pearsall Smith More Quotes From Logan Pearsall Smith When elderly invalids meet with fellow-victims of their own ailments, then at last real conversation begins, and life is delicious. Logan Pearsall Smith elderly lasts real Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste. Logan Pearsall Smith laughter wine happiness 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 gay writing wings The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves. Logan Pearsall Smith success happiness life If they lost the incredible conviction that they can change their wives or husbands, marriage would collapse at once. Logan Pearsall Smith marriage wife husband The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses. Logan Pearsall Smith vitality movement art All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for. Logan Pearsall Smith hypocrisy hypocrite house There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation. Logan Pearsall Smith house beautiful people He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave Logan Pearsall Smith slave fashion Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril. Logan Pearsall Smith money reason sex Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. Logan Pearsall Smith vanity cells writing It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in. Logan Pearsall Smith creeps cracks brain 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. Logan Pearsall Smith soul forever wind I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel. Logan Pearsall Smith real-friends friendship giving An improper mind is a perpetual feast. Logan Pearsall Smith perpetual ethics mind But man is above all a social and political animal; his relations with his fellow human beings form his most absorbing and important interest. Logan Pearsall Smith political animal men A friend who loved perfection would be the perfect friend, did not that love shut his door on me. Logan Pearsall Smith perfection perfect doors 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. Logan Pearsall Smith humor funny science 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. Logan Pearsall Smith odd-things disagree equality When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter. Logan Pearsall Smith ivory-tower gutters towers