Great Throughts Treasury

"What people say behind your back is your standing in the community in which you live."

"No parent was ever very comfortable with a child after it had reached twenty-five."

"Religion is not an intelligence test, but a faith."

"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."

"A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles."

"A man will do more for his stubbornness than for his religion or his country."

"A whipping never hurts so much as the thought that you are being whipped."

"Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes."

"Everyone has to think to be polite; the first impulse is to be impolite."

"I take them to be the only rich man that lives upon what he has, owes nothing, and is contented; for there is no determinate sum of money, nor quantity of estate, that can denote a man rich, since no man is truly rich that has not so much as perfectly satiates his desire of having more; for the desire of more is want, and want is poverty."

"Man is still a savage to the extent that he has little respect for anything that cannot hurt him."

"No man ever knows the few joys of living without some sort of success to his credit. Of all the games worth a candle, success is first. The greatest punishment is to be despised by your neighbors, the world and members of your family."

"People tolerate those they fear further than those they love."

"The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it."

"The most destructive criticism is indifference."

"The way to be nothing is to do nothing."

"No man is smart except by comparison with other who know less; the smartest man who ever lived has reason to be ashamed of himself."

"No man's credit is as good as his money."

"There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing - but we all do and call it Hope."

"When a man succeeds, he does it in spite of everybody, not with the assistance of everybody."

"When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have."

"Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better."

"No person would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. "