Great Throughts Treasury

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."

"Self-respect cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that knowing the good, we have gone for the great."

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."

"If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. "

"It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid."

"There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones. "

"The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. "

"If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it."

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both."

"For this is the journey that men make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find"

"Writers turn dreams into print."

"A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined."

"I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril."

"The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you."

"Young people ought to seek that experience that is going to knock them off center."

"We are never prepared for what we expect."

"A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men."

"A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in? and Gimzo replied, I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty. The other's not. Which one washed his face? The Roman said, That's easy, the sooty one, of course. Gimzo said, No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man's face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it. Cried the Roman, Ah ha! So that's the study of law. Sound reasoning. But Gimzo said, You foolish man, you don't understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One's face is sooty, the other's not. Which one washes? The Roman said, As you just explained, the man without the soot. Gimzo cried,No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it. The Roman said, Ah ha! So that's the study of law! Conforming to the logical. But Rabbi Gimzo said, No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty? The other's not? That's impossible. You're wasting my time with such a proposition. And the Roman said, So that's the law! Common sense. And Gimzo said, You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him. And the Roman cried, That's brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts. And for the last time Gimzo said, No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who could ever understand all the facts? Humbly the Roman asked, Then what is the law? And Gimzo said quietly, It's doing the best we can to ascertain God's intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none."

"A soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor."

"A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild."

"About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America."

"A writer can make a fortune in America, but he can't make a living."

"All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall."

"As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history."

"And no invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before."

"Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors - somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating - none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries."

"Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference."

"How do I change? If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labour. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice."

"For some time now they had been suspicious of him."

"He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others."

"I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening."

"I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behavior of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson, the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant, and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt."

"I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind?a secular humanist?I accept the accusation."

"I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning. My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge."

"I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail."

"I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers."

"I had been educated with free scholarships. I went to nine different universities, always at public expense, and when you have that experience, you are almost obligated to give it back. It's as simple as that."

"I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss."

"I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people."

"I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters."

"I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation."

"I think the bottom line is that if you get through a childhood like mine, it's not at all bad. Obviously, you come out a pretty tough turkey, and you have had all the inoculations you need to keep you on a level keel for the rest of your life. The sad part is, most of us don't come out."

"I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein."

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."

"I think young people ought to seek that experience that is going to knock them off center."

"I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains."

"I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning."

"I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself."

"I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting."

"I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town."