Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

- Norman Douglas

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

- Norman Douglas

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

- 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

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

- 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

It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest.

- 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

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

- Norman Douglas

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

- Norman Douglas

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

- Norman Douglas

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

- Norman Douglas

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

- Norman Douglas

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

- Norman Douglas

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?

- Norman Douglas

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

- Norman Douglas