Robert Staughton Lynd Quotations

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

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

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.

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

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evil-doer.

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

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

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

It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.

Almost any game with any ball is a good game.

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.

Friendship is not going to stand the pressure of greatly great guidance for quite extensive.

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.

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

[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.

When the last Puritan has disappeared from the earth, the man of science will take his place as a killjoy, and we shall be given the same old advice but for different reasons.

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.