Great Throughts Treasury

"Grapeshot, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism."

"Gravitation, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportioned to the quantity of matter they contain?the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made a the proof of b, makes b the proof of a."

"Guillotine, n. A machine which makes a frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason."

"Grave, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student."

"Habit is a shackle for the free."

"Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket."

"Gunpowder, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels."

"Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs."

"Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future; Age knows her as the Dream."

"Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another."

"Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it."

"Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work."

"He did all of this without thinking but with care."

"He had power only to feel, and feeling was torment."

"He had nothing to say and he said it."

"He has provided wrens and swallows.'"

"He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed surprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest."

"Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel."

"Heart, n. An automatic, muscular blood- pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments?a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling?tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility?these things have been patiently ascertained by m. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity."

"He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers - whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? - what the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!"

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward."

"He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age."

"Hibernate, v. I. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it has to try twice before it can cast a shadow."

"Heaven, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own."

"Hidden in hollows and behind clumps of rank brambles were large tents, dimly lighted with candles, but looking comfortable. The kind of comfort they supplied was indicated by pairs of men entering and reappearing, bearing litters; by low moans from within and by long rows of dead with covered faces outside. These tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full; they were continually ejecting the dead, yet were never empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall to-morrow."

"Hippogriff, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises."

"Helpmate, n. A wife, or bitter half."

"'His care,' the gnat said, 'even the insects follows: for us"

"Homicide, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers."

"Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip."

"His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him."

"Hom?opathy, n. A school of medicine midway between allopathy and christian science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for christian science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can"

"Hom?opathist, n. The humorist of the medical profession."

"Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore."

"How providence provides for all his creatures!"

"Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward."

"I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships, and sentiments unsoured by animosities."

"I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats."

"I suppose the country lying between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing could boast a few inhabitants other than alligators. What manner of people they were it is impossible to say, inasmuch as the fighting dispersed, or possibly exterminated them; perhaps in merely classing them as non-saurian I shall describe them with sufficient particularity and at the same time avert from myself the natural suspicion attaching to a writer who points out to persons who do not know him the peculiarities of persons whom he does not know. One thing, however, I hope I may without offense affirm of these swamp-dwellers--they were pious. To what deity their veneration was given--whether, like the Egyptians, they worshiped the crocodile, or, like other Americans, adored themselves, I do not presume to guess. But whoever, or whatever, may have been the divinity whose ends they shaped, unto Him, or It, they had builded a temple. This humble edifice, centrally situated in the heart of a solitude, and conveniently accessible to the supersylvan crow, had been christened Shiloh Chapel, whence the name of the battle."

"Humanity, n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets."

"Humor, like Death, has all seasons for his own."

"Hydra, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads."

"I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London."

"I can give you my word of honor. And pray what may be the value of that? inquired the amused Regent. Monsieur, it is worth its weight in gold."

"Hurricane, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the west indies and is preferred by certain old- fashioned sea-captains."

"Hypocrisy is prejudiced but always holy."

"If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada."

"I was born too poor because of honest parents."

"I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are pleased to be called - an aristocrat."

"Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line."