L.B. Scott Quotes

It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands.

Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

A young man can work at excessive speed with no ill effects, but youth is unfortunately not a permanent condition of life.

He was good looking, "sort of distinguished when he wants to be", had a line, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up all the romance that her age and environment led her to desire

The fruit of youth or of the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.

Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.

Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.

The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.

In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot, Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves containFor moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.

Rather nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them.

Is kissing you generally considered a joyful affair?" -

My own rule is to let everything alone.

We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon

She was one of those people who are famous beyond their actual achievement.

My mind, brightened by the lights and the cheerful tumult, suddenly grasped the fact that all achievement was a placing of emphasis-- a moulding of the confusion of life into form.

Whether it's something that happened twenty years ago or only yesterday I must start out with an emotion, one that's close to me and that I can understand.

one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.

A man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.

You don't write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.

Revenge is a feast for thegods!

A Christmas gambol oft could cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year.

C'mon, Amory. Your romance is overYou don't know how true you spoke. No idea. 'At's the whole trouble

She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.

I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute.

No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.

Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.

Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.

Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person.

...and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires

This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part.It is somehow transcending rather than by avoiding that selfishness that I can bring poise and balance into my life.

Whenever you feel like criticzing any one, " he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven´t had the advantages that you've had.

Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish.

There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything. Of course we make him pay afterward for his moment of superiority, his moment of impressiveness.

Believe me, I may be a bit blasé, but I can still get any man I want.

And then, one fairy night, May became June.

Oh, many a shaft at random sentFinds mark the archer little meant!And many a word at random spokenMay soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!

I became bored - that was all. Boredom, which is another name and a frequent disguise for vitality, became the unconscious motive of all my acts.

Isn’t Hollywood a dump — in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.

I don't ask you to love me always like this but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

But search the land of living men Where wilt thou find their like again.

Adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer.

Cutting honest throats by whispers.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.

Is death the last sleep? No it is the last final awakening.

First you take a drink then the drink takes a drink then the drink takes you.

The chain of friendship however bright does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.

I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right but when I am a little in the wrong.