Zitate von Logan Pearsall Smith

„The truth is that the phenomena of artistic production are still so obscure, so baffling, we are still so far from an accurate scientific and psychological knowledge of their genesis or meaning, that we are forced to accept them as empirical facts; and empirical and non-explanatory names are the names that suit them best.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

"Four Romantic Words" in Words and Idioms : Studies in the English Language (1925), § VI
Kontext: The truth is that the phenomena of artistic production are still so obscure, so baffling, we are still so far from an accurate scientific and psychological knowledge of their genesis or meaning, that we are forced to accept them as empirical facts; and empirical and non-explanatory names are the names that suit them best. The complete explanation of any fact is the very last step in human thought; and it is reached, as I have said, if indeed it is ever reached, by the preliminary processes of recognition, designation, and definition. It is with these preliminary processes that our aesthetic criticism is still occupied.

„The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

"Four Romantic Words" http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewis/reflections/e-frw-text.htm in Words and Idioms : Studies in the English Language (1925), § I.
Kontext: The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought. That history would be a much simpler matter (and language, too, a much more precise instrument) if new thoughts on their appearance, and new facts at their discovery, could at once be analysed and explained and named with scientific precision. But even in science this seldom happens; we find rather that a whole complex group of facts, like those for instance of gas or electricity, are at first somewhat vaguely noticed, and are given, more or less by chance, a name like that of gas, which is an arbitrary formation, or that of electricity, which is derived from the attractive power of electrum or amber when rubbed — the first electric phenomenon to be noticed.

„What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

„There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)

„This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

„What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Age and Death
Afterthoughts (1931)

„If we find, when we read again one of our classics—say Virgil for instance—that we like it better than ever, the experience may suggest an even more pleasing conjecture. Psychologists tell us that fullness of life is the goal of everything that lives, that the impulse towards completeness, towards ripeness and self-realization, is the most compelling of all motives. These discoveries in old books of new beauties and aspects of interest may persuade us, therefore, that we are not only still ourselves, but more ourselves than ever: that our spirit has not only persisted in its being, but has become more lucid in the process.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

“Montaigne,” p. 2
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„The disconnected impressions which we derive from life form a kind of knowledge ‘in growth,’ as Bacon called it; an over-early and peremptory attempt to digest this knowledge into a system tends, as he suggests, to falsify and distort it.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

“English Aphorists,” p. 103
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Art and Letters.
Afterthoughts (1931)

„Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

"Last words" — these are not actually Smith's last words, but a section title).
All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words (1933)

„There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)

„Few things are more shocking to those who practice the arts of success than the frank description of those arts.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

“English Aphorists,” p. 123
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Other People.
Afterthoughts (1931)

„What draws us to him so closely is that he combined a disillusioned estimate of human nature sufficient to launch twenty little cynics, with a craving for love any sympathy urgent enough to turn a weaker nature into a benign sentimentalist.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

recounting Desmond McCarthy’s description of Samuel Johnson, “English Aphorists,” p. 138
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„It is certainly curious that among all the millions of books that have been written on every conceivable subject, so few writers have really tried to describe the tissue of their thoughts and the actual taste of consciousness. And yet this is, after all, our most immediate and direct experience, the only experience of whose reality we are absolutely certain.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

“Montaigne,” p. 7
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„May it [the opposition to fine writing] be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts?“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

“Fine Writing,” p. 306
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate, unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us.
Or, if the controversy is to be carried further; and if, to place it on a more modern basis, we adopt the materialistic method of interpreting aesthetic phenomena now in fashion, may we not find reason to believe that the antagonism between journalist critics and the fine writers they disapprove of is due in its ultimate analysis to what we may designate as economic causes? Are not the authors who earn their livings by their pens, and those who, by what some regard as a social injustice, have been more or less freed from this necessity—are not these two classes of authors in a sort of natural opposition to each other? He who writes at his leisure, with the desire to master his difficult art, can hardly help envying the profits of money-making authors.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

criticizing the Cambridge School of criticism, e.g. John Middleton Murry and Herbert Read, “Fine Writing,” pp. 306-307
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

„How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Myself
Afterthoughts (1931)

„The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.“

—  Logan Pearsall Smith

Age and Death
Afterthoughts (1931)