Carolyn Wells Quotes

Happiness is the ability to recognize it.

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

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 love the Christmas-tide, and yet, I notice this, each year I live; I always like the gifts I get, But how I love the gifts I give!

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.

Actions lie louder than words.

Of two evils choose the prettier.

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

Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder.

Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.

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

The wages of sin is alimony.

A fool and his money are soon married.

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

I don't believe the half I hear, Nor the quarter of what I see! But I have one faith, sublime and true, That nothing can shake or slay; Each spring I firmly believe anew All the seed catalogues say!

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.

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.

'Tis blessed to bestow, and yet, Could we bestow the gifts we get, And keep the ones we give away, How happy were our Christmas day!

Every dogma must have its day.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Circumstances alter faces.

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

The way to do some things is to do them.

Flirtation envies Love, and Love envies Flirtation.

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

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.

Contentment is the result of a limited imagination.

Invitation is the sincerest flattery.

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

Reward is its own virtue.

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

musicians rarely have a sense of humour, at least, about themselves.

Society's the mother of convention.

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.

A profit is not without honor save in Boston.

At times there is nothing so unnatural as nature.

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

To make a library It takes two volumes And a fire. Two volumes and a fire, And interest. The interest alone will do If logs are few.

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.

What is the use of having an imagination if you can't make it work for you?

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

Adversity is neither friend nor foe. It is a common acquaintance that is desired less and rewarded most when embraced.