Carolyn Wells Quotes
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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.
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Advice ... is a habit-forming drug. You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds!
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The way to do some things is to do them.
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I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.
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The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy The books that people talk about we never can recall And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.
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Flirtation envies Love, and Love envies Flirtation.
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A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.
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We should live and learn; but by the time we've learned, it's too late to live.
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I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn't it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no bookin my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson's.
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A living gale is better than a dead calm.
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I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.
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A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.
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A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
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Happiness is the ability to recognize it.
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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.
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Reward is its own virtue.
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Invitation is the sincerest flattery.
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Every dogma must have its day.
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Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.
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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.
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Circumstances alter faces.
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There are many ways of discarding books. You can give them to friends,--or enemies,--or to associations or to poor Southern libraries. But the surest way is to lend them. Then they never come back to bother you.
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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!
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I'm just the same age I've always been.