Norman Douglas Quotes

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him...two.

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.

Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.

Learn to foster an ardent imagination; so shall you descry beauty which others passed unheeded.

Has any man ever obtained inner harmony by simply reading about the experiences of others? Not since the world began has it ever happened. Each man must go through the fire himself.

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.

It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest.

There is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook.

The longer one lives, the more one realizes that nothing is a dish for every day.

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

One can always trust to time. Insert a wedge of time and nearly everything straightens itself out.

How often could things be remedied by a word. How often is it left unspoken.

The business of life is to enjoy oneself; everything else is a mockery.

The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn.

You can cram a truth into an epigram - the truth, never.

People who have reformed themselves has contributed their full share towards the reformation of their neighbor.

Wine is a precarious aphrodisiac, and its fumes have blighted many a mating.

They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves.

Justice is too good for some people and not good enough for the rest.

It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? But the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong.

The secret of happiness is curiosity

I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.

No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble.

There is so much goodness in real life- do let us keep it out of our books.

I can find no room in my cosmos for a deity save as a waste product of human weakness, the excrement of the imagination.

The present age, for all its cosmopolitan hustle, is curiously suburban in spirit.

The families of our friends are always a disappointment.

No great man is ever born too soon or too late.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

It takes a wise man to handle a lie. A fool had better remain honest.

The business of life is to enjoy oneself everything else is a mockery.

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him ... two.

A man can believe in a considerable deal of rubbish and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.