Quotes by Norman Douglas

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

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.

The land is encrusted with ephemeral human conceits. That is not altogether good for a youngster; it disarranges his mind and puts him out of harmony with what is permanent. Just listen a moment. Here, if you are wise, you will seek an antidote. Taken in over-dose, all these churches and pictures and books and other products of our species are toxins for a boy like you. They falsify your cosmic values. Try to be more of an animal. Try to extract pleasure from more obvious sources. Lie fallow for a while. Forget all these things. Go out into the midday glare. Sit among rocks and by the sea. Have a look at the sun and stars for a change; they arc just as impressive as Donatello. Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury? Climb down, one night of full moon, all alone, and rest at its entrance. Familiarize yourself with elemental things. The whole earth reeks of humanity and its works. One has to be old and tough to appraise them at their true worth. Tell people to go to Hell, Denis, with their altar-pieces and museums and clock- towers and funny little art-galleries.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

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