Robert S. Lynd Quotations

Robert S. Lynd

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.

History may be read as the story of the magnificent rearguard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.

I am a confirmed believer in blessings in disguise. I prefer them undisguised when I myself happen to be the person blessed; in fact, I can scarcely recognize a blessing in disguise except when it is bestowed upon someone else.

I sometimes suspect that half our difficulties are imaginary and that if we kept quiet about them they would disappear.

Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother with.

Many bores are so obviously happy that is a pleasure to watch them.

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.

Most remarks that are worth making are commonplace remarks. The thing that makes them worth saying is that we really mean them.

No human being believes that any other human being has a right to be in bed when he himself is up.

The lowbrow is a person who often believes that a bad book is good; the highbrow is a person who as often believes that a good book is bad.

There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.

The telephone is the greatest nuisance among conveniences, the greatest convenience among nuisances.

To go through life without ever being converted to anything seems a mark of insensitiveness. The ideal world would be a world in which everybody was capable of conversion and in which at the same time the converts would admit the possibility that they might be mistaken.

We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realised at the age of 70 that he still knew nothing.