Great Throughts Treasury

"I'm afraid to win, and afraid to lose; I hate a draw and can't stop competing; otherwise I'm fine."

"It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time."

"Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don't."

"Neurotics make poor patriots; if you're ashamed of something as big as yourself, it's hard to be proud of something as small as your country."

"Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn't exist."

"No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive."

"The neurotic believes that life has meaning, but that his life hasn't."

"The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves."

"The only kind of courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."

"The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself."

"We are all such a waste of our potential, like three-way lamps using one-way bulbs."

"There are three iron links in the neurotic's chain: unloving, unlovable, unloved."

"When threatened, the first thing a democracy gives up is democracy."

"Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference."

"We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still. "

"Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets."

"'Your money or your life.' We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does."

"Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head."

"Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you're delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody- and that's what's made them radiantly attractive."

"Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions."

"Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix."

"The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever."

"All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men."

" Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back."

"My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance."

""Your money or your life." We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does."

""I am as I am" is another way of saying "I can do without your love.""

"A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners."

"A childhood can be judged sheltered or not according to which was learned first, the four-letter word or the euphemism."

"A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote."

"A husband only worries about a particular Other Man; a wife distrusts her whole species."

"A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him."

"A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters."

"A woman asks little of love: only that she be able to feel like a heroine."

"A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer."

"A new wound makes all the old ones ache again."

"A woman's mink coat represents the sacrifice of a lot of little animals, including her husband."

"A young woman can live off the folly of men; a man of any age can live off the folly of women."

"After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6 degrees of marriage!"

"Age is a slowing down of everything except fear."

"Air that has been much quarreled in becomes very hard to breathe."

"All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men."

"Any woman can talk herself into being in love with any man, for a while anyway."

"An attractive woman likes feminine company until she's twenty, and after she's twenty-five."

"Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later."

"Anywhere you go liking everyone, everyone will be likeable."

"Always live up to your standards - by lowering them, if necessary."

"An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of."

"As we are human, we can't do what we can't do; as we're neurotic, we can't do what we can."

"An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought."