Quote of the Day — 2026-08-15

There are two things to aim at in life: first to get what you want; and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

About Logan Pearsall Smith

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) was an American-born essayist and man of letters who spent most of his adult life in England, celebrated for his elegant, epigrammatic prose style, particularly in his collection of aphorisms titled 'Afterthoughts.' Born in New Jersey into a prominent Quaker family, he studied at Harvard and Oxford before settling permanently in England, where he became a close friend and intimate of the Bloomsbury literary circle while cultivating his own distinctive, polished prose style influenced by seventeenth-century English writers he deeply admired. His slim volumes of aphorisms and short essays, including 'Trivia' and 'More Trivia,' captured fleeting observations on everyday life, literary taste, and human folly with a precise, often wistfully ironic wit that established him as a master of the compressed literary form. Smith devoted much of his considerable inherited wealth to supporting literary causes and younger writers, and his careful, perfectionist approach to prose style, though it produced a relatively modest body of published work, earned him a devoted readership among fellow writers and critics who admired his exacting craftsmanship. Though never achieving wide popular fame, Smith remains valued among connoisseurs of English prose style as a master of concise, polished wit in the tradition of the classical aphorists.

Historical context

Smith lived through an era of rapid industrial growth, social mobility, and shifting material ambitions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Western societies increasingly prioritized commercial success, accumulation, and professional advancement, intellectual culture engaged in debates over whether material achievement brought genuine fulfillment. Writing from within wealthy British and American literary circles, Smith observed a culture often consumed by pursuit rather than contemplation. His reflection on the distinction between attaining a goal and finding satisfaction in it addressed a broader modern anxiety: the psychological gap between ambition and contentment. Over time, this thought resonated beyond elite literary salons, circulating as a timeless maxim on the paradox of human desire.