A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.
Norman Douglas

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.
Norman Douglas

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
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

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.
Norman Douglas

Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague.
Norman Douglas

The longer one lives, the more one realizes that nothing is a dish for every day.
Norman Douglas

The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.
Norman Douglas

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.
Norman Douglas


There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.
Norman Douglas

They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves.
Norman Douglas

To find a friend one must close one eye - to keep him, two.
Norman Douglas

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?
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

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