Great Throughts Treasury

"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes but quickly to see how to make them good."

"Right is its own defense."

"Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life."

"None will improve your lot."

"Food comes first, then morals."

"Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no: poverty and unhappiness are man's doing."

"War is like love, it always finds a way."

"It may be a mistake to mix different wines, but old and new wisdom mix admirably."

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

"Those who have had no share in the good fortune of the mighty often have a share in their misfortune."

"If there are obstacles, the shortest line between any two points may be the crooked line."

"The more we can squeeze out of nature by invention and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but thinks which lord it over us."

"Everyone needs help from everyone."

"Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of."