Carolyn Wells Quotes

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.

... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.

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.

To take pride in a library kills it. Then, its motive power shifts over to the critical if admiring visitor, and apologies are necessary and acceptable and the fat is in the fire.

... ideals, standards, aspirations,—those are chameleon words, and take color from their speakers,—often false tints. A scholarly man of my acquaintance once told me that he traveled a thousand miles into the desert to get away from the word uplift, and it was the first word he heard after he reached his destination.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.

... advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.

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.