Great Throughts Treasury

"Change a virtue in its circumstances and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges."

"To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once."

"There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on, and imbeciles. The happiest are imbeciles."