Great Throughts Treasury

"Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers gardens."

"Religion's in the heart, not in the knees."

"Some people are so fond of ill luck that they will run halfway to meet it."

"The superior man is he who develops, in harmonious proportions, his moral, intellectual, and physical nature. This should be the end at which men of all classes should aim, and it is this only which constitutes real greatness."

"We have peace as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body. Chains are worse than bayonets."

"There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear."

"God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Man said, “Let us make God in our image.” "

"Intemperance is the epitome of every crime, the cause of every kind of misery. "

"“The last word” is the most dangerous of internal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bombshell."

"A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon, out of respect for that "ancient institution," the old one."

"A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as when he respects a woman's softness."

"A blessed companion is a book,-a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend."

"A coquette is like a recruiting sergeant, always on the lookout for fresh victims."

"A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks."

"A creature undefiled by the taint of the world, unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward growth it shall be no other!"

"A man, so to speak, who is not able to bow to his own conscience every morning is hardly in a condition to respectfully salute the world at any other time of the day."

"A piece of simple goodness--a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature--a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth."

"A paroxysm of nervous effervescence."

"A pill that the present moment is daily bread to thousands."

"A sermon on a hat: "'The hat, my boy, the hat, whatever it may be, is in itself nothing--makes nothing, goes for nothing; but, be sure of it, everything is life depends upon the cock of the hat.' For how many men--we put it to your own experience, reader--have made their way through the thronging crowds that beset fortune, not by the innate worth and excellence of their hats, but simply, as Sampson Piebald has it, by 'the cock of their hats'? The cock's all.""

"A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment!"

"Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth."

"As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate"; and the water, put nought in in malice."

"After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world."

"Dogmation is puppyism come to its full growth."

"Conscience, though ever so small a worm while we live, grows suddenly into a serpent on our deathbed."

"Duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's wand, it changes to a snake."

"Earth is here [Australia] so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest."

"Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?"

"Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she"

"Fix yourself upon the wealthy. In a word, take this for a golden rule through life: Never, never have a friend that is poorer than yourself."

"Etiquette has no regard for moral qualities."

"Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together."

"Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment."

"Gravity is more suggestive than convincing."

"Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime."

"Grumblers deserve to be operated upon surgically; their trouble is usually chronic."

"He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man's usual fate - he was lost upon the coral reefs."

"He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain."

"He is one of those wise philanthropists who in a time of famine would vote for nothing but a supply of toothpicks."

"He was so good he would pour rose-water on a toad."

"Honest bread is very well--it's the butter that makes the temptation."

"Humor is the harmony of the heart."

"How beautiful can time with goodness make an old man look."

"I never hear the rattling of dice that it does not sound to me like the funeral bell of the whole family."

"If slander be a snake, it is a winged one--it flies as well as creeps."

"If you tickle the earth with a hoe she laughs with a harvest."

"In all the wedding cake, hope is the sweetest of the plums."

"If an earthquake were to engulf England tomorrow, the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubbish, just to celebrate the event."

"In the intercourse of the world people should not take words as so much genuine coin of standard metal, but merely as counters that people play with."