Great Throughts Treasury

"A man who is so dull that he can learn only be personal experience is too dull to learn anything important by experience."

"All religion, all life, all art, all expression come down to this: to the effort of the human soul to break through its barrier of loneliness, of intolerable loneliness, and make some contact with another seeking soul, or with what all souls seek, which is (by any name) God."

"Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it."

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

"i have had my ups and downs but wotthehell wotthehell yesterday sceptres and crowns fried oysters and velvet gowns and today i herd with bums but wotthehell wotthehell i wake the world from sleep as i caper and sing and leap when i sing my wild free tune wotthehell wotthehell under the blear eyed moon i am pelted with cast off shoon but wotthehell wotthehell"

"it wont be long now it wont be long man is making deserts of the earth it wont be long now before man will have used it up so that nothing but ants and centipedes and scorpions can find a living on it ... what man calls civilization always results in deserts ... men talk of money and industry of hard times and recoveries of finance and economics but the ants wait and the scorpions wait for while men talk they are making deserts all the time getting the world ready for the conquering ant drought and erosion and desert because men cannot learn ... it wont be long now it wont be long till earth is barren as the moon and sapless as a mumbled bone"

"Fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while."

"a spider and a fly - i heard a spider and a fly arguing wait said the fly do not eat me i serve a great purpose in the world you will have to show me said the spider i scurry around gutters and sewers and garbage cans said the fly and gather up the germs of typhoid influenza and pneumonia on my feet and wings then i carry these germs into households of men and give them diseases all the people who have lived the right sort of life recover from the diseases and the old soaks who have weakened their systems with liquor and iniquity succumb it is my mission to help rid the world of these wicked persons i am a vessel of righteousness scattering seeds of justice and serving the noblest uses it is true said the spider that you are more useful in a plodding material sort of way than i am but i do not serve the utilitarian deities i serve the gods of beauty look at the gossamer webs i weave they float in the sun like filaments of song if you get what i mean i do not work at anything i play all the time i am busy with the stuff of enchantment and the materials of fairyland my works transcend utility i am the artist a creator and demi god it is ridiculous to suppose that i should be denied the food i need in order to continue to create beauty i tell you plainly mister fly it is all damned nonsense for that food to rear up on its hind legs and say it should not be eaten you have convinced me said the fly say no more and shutting all his eyes he prepared himself for dinner and yet he said i could have made out a case for myself too if i had had a better line of talk of course you could said the spider clutching a sirloin from him but the end would have been just the same if neither of us had spoken at all boss i am afraid that what the spider said is true and it gives me to think furiously upon the futility of literature archy"

"A fierce unrest seethes at the core, of all existing things:, it was the eager wish to soar, that gave the gods their wings."

"A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country."

"A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?"

"A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists."

"A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself."

"Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough."

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

"A man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat"

"An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience."

"Blood will tell, but often it tells too much."

"Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society... We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age."

"Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong."

"Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint."

"Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything."

"Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes."

"Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them."

"By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing."

"Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness."

"He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country."

"Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control."

"I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column."

"I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors I would rather start a family than finish one blood will tell but often it tells too much ."

"I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well."

"I would rather start a family than finish one."

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves."

"Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun."

"In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yes, it is women who keep the church going."

"Life is one damned kitten after another. Mehitabel the Alley Cat"

"If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind."

"It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld."

"In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent."

"Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue."

"Not every woman in old slippers can manage to look like Cinderella"

"Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever."

"One of the most important things to remember about infant care is: don't change diapers in midstream."

"Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, Have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?"

"Personally my ambition is to get my time as a cockroach shortened for good."

"Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

"Now and then there is a person born who is so unlucky that he runs into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else."

"Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat"

"Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind."