Norman Douglas famous quotes

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

#Friendship #Eye #Two

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.
-- Norman Douglas

#Firsts #Authority #Should

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

#Business #Advertisements

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

#Children #Giving #Want

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

#Reality #Mind #Sometimes

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

#Home #Men #Thinking

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.
-- Norman Douglas

#Mean #Thinking #People

Why always "not yet"?  Do flowers in spring say "not yet"? 
-- Norman Douglas

#Spring #Flower #Carpe Diem

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Food #Trying #Culture

The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.
-- Norman Douglas

#Winter #Hardship #Green

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Character #Men #Age

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

#Teaching #Men #Order

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

#Imagination

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.
-- Norman Douglas

#Men #Nucleus #Germs

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

#Moral #Kind #Outlook

The families of our friends are always a disappointment.
-- Norman Douglas

#Family #Disappointment

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Issues #Society #Age

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.
-- Norman Douglas

#Teaching #Men #Race

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Mother #Children #Animal

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

#People #Reform #Neighbor

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

#Life #Enjoy #Mockery

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

#Truth

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Reading #Drinking #Tea

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

#Rude #Pay #Half

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

#Grandmother #Men #Saffron

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

#Wisdom #Dying

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

#Age #Hustle #Spirit

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

#Real #Book #Real Life

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
-- Norman Douglas

#Education #Echoes #States

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

#Communication

The secret of happiness is curiosity
-- Norman Douglas

#Happiness #Curiosity #Secret

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

#Wise #Lying #Men

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

#Wine #Aphrodisiac #Mating

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Reading #Men #Fire

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Mind #Atheism #Scylla

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Happiness #Giving #Body

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

#Time #Wedges #Insert

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

#Justice #People #Not Good Enough

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

#Neighbor

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

#Realizing #Dishes

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.
-- Norman Douglas

#Artist #Perfect #Generations

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

#Attitude #Believe #Men