Great Throughts Treasury

"The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them."

"The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel."

"The period of time covered by history is far too short to allow any perceptible progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The notion that there has been any such Progress since Caesar’s time (less than 20th centuries ago) is too absurd for discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as existing in the past exists at the present moment."

"The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery."

"The two things that worthless people sacrifice everything for are happiness and freedom, and their punishment is that they get both only to find that they have no capacity for the happiness and no use for the freedom."

"There is no belief, however grotesque and even villainous, that cannot be made a part of human nature if it is inculcated in childhood and not contradicted in the child’s hearing."

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."

"Under full developed Capitalism civilization is always on the verge of revolution. We live as in a villa on Vesuvius."

"We learn from experience that people never learn anything from experience."

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a true force of Nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, an, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can."

"This world, sir, is very clearly a place of torment and penance, a place where the fool flourishes and the good and wise are hated and persecuted, a place where men and women torture one another in the name of love; where children are scourged and enslaved in the name of parental duty and education; where the weak in body are poisoned and mutilated in the name of healing."

"When a stupid person is doing something they are ashamed of, they always declares that it is their duty."

"We have two tyrannous physical passions: concupiscence and chastity. We become mad in pursuit of sex: we become equally mad in the persecution of that pursuit. Unless we gratify our desire the race is lost; unless we restrain it we destroy ourselves."

"Where there is no knowledge, ignorance calls itself knowledge."

"Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations."

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."

"Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it."

"Lack of money is the root of all evil."

"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

"No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect."

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."

"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them."

"Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

"Success covers a multitude of blunders."

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent toward them. That is the essence of inhumanity."

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

"Virtue is insufficient temptation."

"There is only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war."

"A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else."

"A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned."

"A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be a painter or ploughman."

"A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care."

"A family is a tyranny ruled over by its weakest member."

"A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having 'a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.' Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid."

"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."

"A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income."

"A family enjoying the unspeakable peace and freedom of being orphans."

"A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a nation's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again."

"A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."

"A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out."

"A great devotee of the gospel of getting on."

"A lot of people complain about the problems facing them always to achieve success. But I do not believe in the existence of problems in this world are just looking for problems that they want, and if they are not found, they are creating problems it."

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold."

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven"

"A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up."

"A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself."

"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."

"A man of genius is not a man who sees more than other men do. On the contrary, it is very often found that he is absentminded and observes much less than other people... Why is it that the public have such an exaggerated respect for him - after he is dead? The reason is that the man of genius understands the importance of the few things he sees."