J. L. B. Smith Quotes

Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don't want.

A good Christian is a velvet-covered brick.

Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.

My childhood was not an episode from Downton Abbey

Nature never quite goes along with us. She is somber at weddings, sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety-nine out of a hundred picnics.

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

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there isn't a God.

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

God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur.

It is hard for me to believe that any husband and wife are really happy together. And to have thee say you are is an unspeakable comfort.

The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore-- A shore that wears on her alluring brows Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, That blushed a tell-tale.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious.

Human life is created in God's image, and that makes it sacred.

I'm as cruel as life. As cruel as love.

Saint Augustine defined idolatry as worshiping what should be used or using what should be worshiped

I'm being a dad and a good husband.

Nearly every study shows that competition from cheap foreign labor undercuts the wages of American workers and legal immigrants.

The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.

A system that was originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.

We do not celebrate people who have made success out of serious hard work.

Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

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

I have angel wings and a halo on my wrist, which I got done on my 30th birthday in memory of my brother.

I sometimes get that wonderful sympathy between me and the audience, telling me I've reached their hearts. And when I do, the thrill is mine.

I have a great time with my life, and I wanna share it.

Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

An angel of God never has wings.

Power and position often make a man trifle with the truth.

I read daft history books. Sometimes the books I read are a bit crackers or strange.

It's incredibly difficult to keep a healthy body image in this business.

Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.

An improper mind is a perpetual feast.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.

Because normal human activity is worse for nature than the greatest nuclear accident in history.

I like seeing people when they can't see me.

We must seek the loving-kindness of God in all the breadth and open-air of common life.

One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.

Certain bookworms eat books. Eat them, swear in them, spill things on them.

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

Parliament is the longest running farce in the West End.

Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.