Great Throughts Treasury

"I never saw anything funny that wasn’t terrible. If it causes pain, it’s funny; if it doesn’t, it isn’t. I try to hide the pain with embarrassment, and the more I do that, the better they like it. But that does not mean they are unsympathetic. Oh no, they laugh often with tears in their eyes." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble." -

"If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change." - Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard

"It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same." - Philip Gibbs, fully Sir Philip Gibbs

"Be yourself. Who else is better qualified." - Frank J. Giblin, II

"In all things it is better to hope than to despair." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"For most Americans the sexual revolution was not a vast national orgy of swingers. There was never widespread approval of adultery or promiscuity. The revolution - evolution is a better word - appeared rather as a massive questioning of the double standard and the sexual constraints we grew up with." - Ellen Goodman

"You have a shilling. I have a shilling. We swap. You have my shilling and I have yours. We are no better off. But suppose you have an idea and I have an idea. We swap. Now you have two ideas and I have two ideas. We have increased our stock of ideas 100 per cent." -

"It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one; a great deal may arouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure." -

"Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it." -

"To divest one’s self of some prejudices would be like taking off the skin to feel the better." -

"There are three kinds of silence. Silence from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends to evil. Silence, or rest from desires and passions is still better, because it promotes quietness of spirit. But the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wandering thoughts, because that is essential to internal recollection, and because it lays a foundation for a proper reputation and for silence in other respects." - Madame Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe Guyon

"I believe we are here to do good. It is the responsibility of every human being to aspire to do something worthwhile, to make this world a better place than the one he found. Life is a gift, and if we agree to accept it, we must contribute in return. When we fail to contribute, we fail to adequately answer why we are here." - Armand Hammer

"Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

"You can only make others better by being good yourself." - Hugh Reginald Haweis

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"In general, one cannot judge the true extent of a person’s fortune by outward appearances. The little a righteous man has may be far better than the noisy abundance in which many lawless delight. The modest possessions of a righteous man make him much happier than the great fortunes of many evildoers about which so much ado is made in the world." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"It is better to be a self-made man, filled up according to God’s original pattern, than to be half a man, made after some other man’s pattern." - Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

"There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting up people." - John Andrew Holmes

"The moral and spiritual forces of our country do not lose ground in the hours we are busy on our jobs; their battle is the leisure time. We are organizing the production of leisure. We need better organization of its consumption." - Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

"Good will, solidarity and wretchedness, and the struggle for a better world have now thrown off their religious garb. The attitude of today’s martyrs is no longer patience but action; their goal is no longer their own immortality in the after-life but the happiness of men who come after them for whom they know how to die." - Max Horkheimer

"To live exuberantly - to fully know and be fully known - we must be prepared to risk lighting a candle to illuminate the darkness of even our most intimate relationships, revealing ourselves and seeing clearly all that is revealed. To grow in our relationships and to expand as individuals within them, we must exchange the glorious unreality of the honeymoon for something even better..." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

"Every man, however good he may be, has a yet better man dwelling in him which is properly himself, but to whom nevertheless he is often unfaithful. It is to this interior and less mutable being that we should attach ourselves not to the changeable, every-day man." -

"The worst speculative skeptic ever I knew was a much better man than the most superstitious devotee and bigot." - David Hume

"If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge. What you have come to know, pursue by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge, for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Believe that many precepts are better than much wealth , for wealth quickly fails us, but precepts abide through all time." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"Our belief in truth itself.. that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives." - William James

"Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression. We have all felt the desire, at times almost victorious desire, to get away from everything and retire into a cottage in the wilderness. But we don't do it, because we are better men and women than we think we are." - Robert Willard Johnson

"It is better to live rich than to die rich." -

"It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." -

"Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past." -

"Nothing is ended with honour which does not conclude better than it began." -

"The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation." -

"The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed." - Jenkin Lloyd Jones

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"To better understand one another, we should all swap places for a while with each other. Every doctor should have an operation, every policeman and minister spend a number of months in jail and every industrialist become a labor-union member." -

"In the last twenty years we have developed this treadmill mentality. We think that by always reaching higher, accomplishing more - more money, a better body, the perfect mate - that we will automatically be happy. That’s an illusion. All this reaching is just making us crazy. We need to rest." - Melvyn Kinder

"Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works. It is better to be praised by one's own works than by the words of another." - Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

"Friendliness is contagious. The trouble is, many of us wait to catch it from someone else, when we might better be giving them a chance to catch it from us." - Donald Anderson Laird

"In managing human affairs, there is no better rule than self-restraint." -

"One may be better than his reputation, but never better than his principles." - Nicolas Valentin de Latena

"True philosophy is that which makes us to ourselves and to all about us, better; and at the same time, more content, patient, calm, and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm, and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"We are presently ignorant. We had better keep our metaminds open." - Keith Lehrer

"The best thing about philosophy is that it fails. It is better that philosophy fail to totalize meaning for it thereby remains open to the irreducible otherness of transcendence." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"Our whole life should speak forth our thankfulness; every condition and place we are in should be a witness to our thankfulness. This will make the times and places we live in better for us. When we ourselves are monuments of God’s mercy, it is fit we should be patterns of His praises, and leave monuments to others. We should think it given to us to do something better than to live in. We live not to live: our life is not the end of itself, but the praise of the giver." - Richard Sibbes

"The world would be both better and brighter if we would dwell on the duty of happiness, as well as on the happiness of duty." - John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

"The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promise of impossibilities." -

"It was left for the Germans to bring about a revolution of a kind never seen before: [the Nazi] revolution, devoid of ideas... and opposed to everything that is higher, better and decent; opposed to liberty, truth, and justice." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann