Norman Douglas Quotes

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.

Mr. Keith, by means of some mysterious formula, soon procured two seats in the front row, the occupants of which smilingly took their places among the crowd at the back.

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

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

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

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

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

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

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

History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of romance - glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The poet may be an uninspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused of wrongdoing or deceiving the public, however incongruous their efforts. They write well or badly, and there the matter ends. The historian, who fails in his duty, deceives the reader and wrongs the dead.

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.

Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I think modern education over-emphasizes the intellect. I suppose that comes from the scientific trend of the times. You cannot obtain a useful citizen if you only develop his intellect. We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training. So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future. We are rearing up a brood of crafty egoists, a generation whose earliest recollections are those of getting something for nothing from the State.
I am inclined to trace our present social unrest to this over-valuation of the intellect. It hardens the heart and blights all generous impulses. What is going to replace the home, Mr. Keith?

The secret of happiness is curiosity

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.

I grow more intolerant of fools as the years roll on. If I had a son, I was saying, I would take him from school at the age of fourteen, not a moment later, and put him for two years in a commercial house. Wake him up; make an English citizen of him. Teach him how to deal with men as men, to write a straightforward business letter, manage his own money and gain some respect for those industrial movements which control the world. Next, two years in some wilder part of the world, where his own countrymen and equals by birth are settled under primitive conditions, and have formed their rough codes of society. The intercourse with such people would be a capital invested for life. The next two years should be spent in the great towns of Europe, in order to remove awkwardness of manner, prejudices of race and feeling, and to get the outward forms of a European citizen. All this would sharpen his wits, give him more interest in life, more keys to knowledge. It would widen his horizon. Then, and not a minute sooner, to the University, where he would go not as a child but a man capable of enjoying its real advantages, attend lectures with profit, acquire manners instead of mannerisms and a University tone instead of a University taint.

The families of our friends are always a disappointment.

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.

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

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

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

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

We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training. So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it - where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future.

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

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

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

Mr. Frederick Parker spent a good deal of his time in endeavouring to mask, under a cloak of boisterous good humour, a really remarkable combination of malevolence and imbecility.

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.