Carolyn Wells Quotes

Society's the mother of convention.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

Contentment is the result of a limited imagination.

... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.

Of two evils choose the prettier.

Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil.

I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.

Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife, This simple boon I beg of Fate - A thousand years of Middle Life.

I am more fond of achieving than striving. My theories must prove to be facts or be discarded as worthless. My efforts must soon be crowned with success, or discontinued.

A profit is not without honor save in Boston.

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.

You wouldn't believe On All Hallow Eve What lots of fun we can make, With apples to bob, And nuts on the hob, And a ring-and-thimble cake.

The wages of sin is alimony.

One of the first principles of perseverance is to know when to stop persevering.

Wall Street. - The abode of the Brokers and the Broke.

To take pride in a library kills it. Then, its motive power shifts over to the critical if admiring visitor, and apologies are necessary and acceptable and the fat is in the fire.

Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder.

The way to do some things is to do them.

Where there's a will there's a detective story.

We should live and learn; but by the time we've learned, it's too late to live.

A living gale is better than a dead calm.

Invitation is the sincerest flattery.

Circumstances alter faces.

A fool and his money are soon married.

Advice ... is a habit-forming drug. You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds!

Reward is its own virtue.

Every dogma must have its day.

Actions lie louder than words.

I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.

I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.

... ideals, standards, aspirations,--those are chameleon words, and take color from their speakers,--often false tints. A scholarly man of my acquaintance once told me that he traveled a thousand miles into the desert to get away from the word uplift, and it was the first word he heard after he reached his destination.

A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.

There are many ways of discarding [books]. You can give them to friends,--or enemies,--or to associations or to poor Southern libraries. But the surest way is to lend them. Then they never come back to bother you.

At times there is nothing so unnatural as nature.

... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books you want.You may have deplorably poor taste or bad judgment. Never mind. Correct those traits before you exchange your books.

how could advice be successful? If it turns out right, the adviser is ignored and the advisee takes all the credit. If it proves mistaken, the adviser receives all the blame.

A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.

In December people give no thought to the Past or the Future. They thing only of the Present.

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.

What is a magazine? A small body of Literature entirely surrounded by advertisements.

Flirtation envies Love, and Love envies Flirtation.

I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn't it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no bookin my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson's.

Happiness is the ability to recognize it.

I'm just the same age I've always been.

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.

Almost before the big motor-car stopped, the girl sprang out.

Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself