Great Throughts Treasury

"Deep experience is never peaceful."

"Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity."

"Every governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention."

"We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are."

"There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time."

"The balloon of experience is in fact of course tied to the earth, and under that necessary we swing, thanks to a rope of remarkable length, in the more or less commodious can of the imagination; but it is by the rope we know where we are, and from the moment that cable is cut we are at large and unrelated."

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue."

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."

"What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter so much what you do in particular, so long as you're living your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?"

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."

"Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself. "

"Ideas are, in truth, force. "

"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. "

"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own. "

"A family is a little world within doors; the miniature resemblance of the great worls without"

"It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them."

"A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will you care for that? Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more information one has about one's dangers the better. I don't agree to that?it may make them dangers. We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any one tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."

"A happy ending is a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks."

"A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals."

"A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression - from The Art of Fiction"

"Ah darling, goodness, I think, never brought any one out. Goodness, when it's real, precisely, rather keeps people IN."

"After this Daisy was never at home, and Winterbourne ceased to meet her at the houses of their common acquaintances, because, as he perceived, these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far. They ceased to invite her, and they intimated that they desired to express observant Europeans the great truth that, though Miss Daisy Miller was a young American lady, her behavior was not representative - was regarded by her compatriots as abnormal. Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned towards her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all. He said to himself that she was too light and childish, too uncultivated and unreasoning, too provincial, to have reflected upon her ostracism or even to have perceived it. Then at other moments he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class. It must be admitted that holding oneself to a belief in Daisy's innocence came to see Winterbourne more and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry. As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitude as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal. From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late."

"All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground."

"A second chance?that?s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark?we do what we can?we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue."

"A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see ? that's my idea of happiness."

"An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher... Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius."

"Always keep a window in the attic open; not just cracked: open."

"A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it."

"Am I grave?, he asked. I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear."

"And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved."

"Anger does not last, that way, for years. But there are other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong."

"Art is a point of view, and a genius way of looking at things."

"And our passion is our task."

"Be one on whom nothing is lost."

"Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture--he was moving in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas--he drew a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his luxury wouldn't be broken."

"Art does not lie in copying nature. - Nature furnishes the material by means of which to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature. - The artist beholds in nature more than she herseif is conscious of."

"Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and in the fullness of time he got used to it."

"Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize."

"Art without life is poor affair."

"By the time she had grown sharper... she found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable- images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn't big enough to play."

"Catherine had not understood all that she said; her attention was given to enjoying Marian?s ease of manner and flow of ideas."

"Cats and monkeys - monkeys and cats - all human life is there!"

"Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background."

"Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance."

"Do you think it is better to be clever than to be good? Good for what? asked the Doctor. You are good for nothing unless you are clever."

"Don?t underestimate the value of irony?it is extremely valuable."

"Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself."