J. L. B. Smith Quotes
It is the sternest philosophy, but on the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena of the world, failure and success are not accidents, as we so frequently suppose, but the strictest justice.
Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One, Who sees the end from the beginning: He shall unravel all.
My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
We have two lives; The soul of man is like the rolling world, One half in day, the other dipt in night; The one has music and the flying cloud, The other, silence and the wakeful stars.
Not on the stage alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his asides.
The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.
Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.
A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.
Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural.
Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.
A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near!
Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.
All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.
The whole point is, we can forget. It’s important that we forget some things. Otherwise we’d go round the world carrying a hodload of stuff we just don’t need.
I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.
All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.
I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.
I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.
The head has its confines. The head’s got those all right, and the heart. The heart has its reasons.
I started to like my voice - the sound of it. So then I started to listen to it as something separate. To me, it sounded good that way as well.
From out the peaceful hollow of its throat / such music pours as I am unaware / how to devise. I did not think these things. / It is the reed that sings.
People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.
I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.
Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.
Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.
Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.
