Great Throughts Treasury

"Purity Is obscurity."

"I prefer charity to hospitality because charity begins at home and hospitality ends there."

"Everybody who has somebody who thinks they are wonderful also has somebody who thinks they are terrible."

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."

"Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them."

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

"Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental."

"Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

"To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up."

"You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

"Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore."

"The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly."

"Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive."

"The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late."

"Too clever is dumb."

"There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all."

"If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work."

"Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early? "

"Don't over-analyze your marriage; it's like yanking up a fragile indoor plant every 20 minutes to see how its roots are growing."

"Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.... So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves."

"I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable."

"In real life, it takes only one to make a quarrel."

"Happiness is having a scratch for every itch."

"Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope."

"Life is sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating."

"I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons."

"Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force."

"Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor."

"One man's remorse is another man's reminiscence. "

"Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it."

"Middle age ends and senescence begins, The day your descendants outnumber your friends."

"People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up."

"More than a catbird hates a cat, Or a criminal hates a clue, Or the Axis hates the United States, That's how much I love you. I love you more than a duck can swim, And more than a grapefruit squirts, I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore, And more than a toothache hurts. As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea, Or a juggler hates a shove, As a hostess detests unexpected guests, That's how much you I love. I love you more than a wasp can sting, And more than the subway jerks, I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch, And more than a hangnail irks. I swear to you by the stars above, And below, if such there be, As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes, That's how you're loved by me."

"Come live with me and be my love And we will all the pleasures prove Of a marriage conducted with economy In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy. We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat With practically room to swing a cat And a potted cactus to give it hauteur And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water. We’ll eat, without undue discouragement, Foods low in cost but high in nouragement And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily, The peculiar wine of Little Italy. We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty And buy our clothes for something-fifty. We’ll bus for miles on holidays For seas at depressing matinees, And every Sunday we’ll have a lark And take a walk in Central Park. And one of these days not too remote You’ll probably up and cut my throat."

"Tonight’s December thirty-first, Something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, Like a time bomb in the hall. Hark, it's midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year!"

"We Don't Need to Leave Yet, Do We? Or, Yes We Do - One kind of person when catching a train always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus, And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous, And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets, And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral rickets. One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and hastens off to the play, And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee, And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is positively sumptuous, Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical than bumptious. And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting room while the train is made up in the yards, can never understand, Is the injustice of the second kind's reaching their scat just as the train moves out, just as they had planned, And what the second kind cannot understand as they stumble over the first kind's heel just as the footlights flash on at last Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least bit foolish at having entered the theater before the cast. Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second kind always wants to tarry, Which wouldn't make any difference, except that each other is what they always marry."

"Higgledy piggledy, my black hen, She lays eggs for gentlemen. Gentlemen come every day To count what my black hen doth lay. If perchance she lays too many, They fine my hen a pretty penny; If perchance she fails to lay, The gentlemen a bonus pay. Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow, She’s cooperating now. At first she didn’t understand That milk production must be planned; She didn’t understand at first She either had to plan or burst, But now the government reports She’s giving pints instead of quarts. Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors, They are giggling at their labors. First they plant the tiny seed, Then they water, then they weed, Then they hoe and prune and lop, They they raise a record crop, Then they laugh their sides asunder, And plow the whole caboodle under. Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you’re given, The less you lead, the more you’re driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake."

"Unwillingly Miranda wakes, Feels the sun with terror, One unwilling step she takes, Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda's sight Is old and gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star, Like the twilight shining, Haunted by a calendar, Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, silver girl, Draw the mirror toward you; Time who makes the years to whirl Adorned as he adored you. Time is timelessness for you; Calendars for the human; What's a year, or thirty, to Loveliness made woman? Oh, Night will not see thirty again, Yet soft her wing, Miranda; Pick up your glass and tell me, then-- How old is Spring, Miranda?"

"A cough is something that you yourself can't help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you."

"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."

"A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband."

"A Caution to Everybody - consider the Auk. Becoming extinct before because he forgot out to fly and could only walk. Consider Man, who may well become extinct, because he forgot how to walk and learned to fly before he thinked."

"A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold."

"A husband is a guy who tells you when you've got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick."

"A fig for embryo Lohengrins! I'll open all his safety pins, I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle, and give him readings from Aristotle. Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring, and Tabasco sauce for his teething ring. Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water to marry somebody else's daughter."

"A jolly young fellow from Yuma told an elephant joke to a puma; now his skeleton lies beneath hot western skies-the puma had no sense of huma."

"A little incompatibility is the spice of life, as long as he has income and she is pattable."

"A man is quite dishonorable to sell himself for anything other than quite a lot of pelf."

"A mighty creature is the germ, though smaller than a pachyderm. His customary dwelling place is deep within the human race. His childish pride he often pleases by giving people strange diseases. Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? You probably contain a germ."

"A Penny Saved Is Impossible: The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift."