55 Quotes by Louis Auchincloss

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you’ll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

Maybe when I’m dead, I’ll be forgiven, but I’m afraid I’ll also be forgotten.

As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It’s a very curious thing. But I deal with human beings with whom I’ve come in contact and have had a chance to closely observe. Their upper-classness is not a matter of particular fascination for me.

Once somebody’s aware of a plot, it’s like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it’s very ugly.

There’s no real alternative to what there is.

Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It’s by no means a battle lost. Yet.

I couldn’t bear to see a chapter of the gospel turned into a chapter of Trollope.

It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There’s an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but that’s true of every great era. I’m sure there was a lot dreadful art in the Renaissance that we fortunately don’t see today.

I was sophisticated enough to know that the written word is no mirror of the writer’s character, that the amateur, though a selfless angel, may show himself a pompous ass, while the professional, a monster of ego, can convince you in a phrase that he has the innocence of a child. I.