Top 40 Carolyn Wells Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We should live and learn; but by the time we’ve learned, it’s too late to live.”

— Carolyn Wells

2. “Actions lie louder than words.”

— Carolyn Wells

3. “A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.”

— Carolyn Wells

4. “Happiness is the ability to recognize it.”

— Carolyn Wells

5. “Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.”

— Carolyn Wells

6. “A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.”

— Carolyn Wells

7. “A fool and his money are soon married.”

— Carolyn Wells

8. “Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil.”

— Carolyn Wells

9. “One of the first principles of perseverance is to know when to stop persevering.”

— Carolyn Wells

10. “Where there’s a will there’s a detective story.”

— Carolyn Wells

11. “I’m just the same age I’ve always been.”

— Carolyn Wells

12. “The wages of sin is alimony.”

— Carolyn Wells

13. “A living gale is better than a dead calm.”

— Carolyn Wells

14. “Circumstances alter faces.”

— Carolyn Wells

15. “A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.”

— Carolyn Wells

16. “Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife, This simple boon I beg of Fate – A thousand years of Middle Life.”

— Carolyn Wells

17. “Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself.”

— Carolyn Wells

18. “In December people give no thought to the Past or the Future. They thing only of the Present.”

— Carolyn Wells

19. “At times there is nothing so unnatural as nature.”

— Carolyn Wells

20. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

21. “Invitation is the sincerest flattery.”

— Carolyn Wells

22. “Of two evils choose the prettier.”

— Carolyn Wells

23. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

24. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

25. “A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind’s eye.”

— Carolyn Wells

26. “Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.”

— Carolyn Wells

27. “A profit is not without honor save in Boston.”

— Carolyn Wells

28. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

29. “Contentment is the result of a limited imagination.”

— Carolyn Wells

30. “Almost before the big motor-car stopped, the girl sprang out.”

— Carolyn Wells

31. “Flirtation envies Love, and Love envies Flirtation.”

— Carolyn Wells

32. “When I feel that I’m going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.”

— Carolyn Wells

33. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

34. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

35. “The way to do some things is to do them.”

— Carolyn Wells

36. “Wall Street. – The abode of the Brokers and the Broke.”

— Carolyn Wells

37. “What is a magazine? A small body of Literature entirely surrounded by advertisements.”

— Carolyn Wells

38. “Reward is its own virtue.”

— Carolyn Wells

39. “Every dogma must have its day.”

— Carolyn Wells

40. “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.”

— Carolyn Wells

41. “On account of disastrous losses in Wall Street that morning, I had determined to kill myself. I’m not of much account, any way, and I was desperate. I knew Uncle Robert would give me no money to repay my stock losses, for he always thought speculation no better than any other sort of gambling – and it isn’t.”

— Carolyn Wells

42. “Since you have a choice between life and death, why not choose life and live.”

— Carolyn Wells

43. “Grieving is an expression of gratitude, and that expression doesn’t have to be rushed.”

— Carolyn Wells