Norman Douglas Quotes & Sayings

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

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

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. — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No great man is ever born too soon or too late. — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

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

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

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

The secret of happiness is curiosity — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

The law does not content itself with classifying and punishing crime. It invents crime. — Norman Douglas

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

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? — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Norman Douglas

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

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

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. — Norman Douglas

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

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

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

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

Everybody overstates his case, particularly when he is anxious to do something which he considers useful. — Norman Douglas

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

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. — Norman Douglas

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