Norman Douglas Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Norman Douglas
"The older I get," observed Mr... van Koppen, "the more I realize that everything depends upon what a man postulates. The rest is plain sailing."

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
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
As to abuse, I thrive on it. Abuse, hearty abuse, is a tonic to all save men of indifferent health.

Norman Douglas
Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous.

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

Norman Douglas
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
All life is a concession to the improbable.

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

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

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

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

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
You can tell the values of a nation by its advertisements.

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

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

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

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

Norman Douglas