Great Throughts Treasury

"A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it."

"A sudden lie may be sometimes only manslaughter upon truth; but by a carefully constructed equivocation, truth always is with malice a forethought deliberately murdered."

"Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way."

"Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb."

"All religions die of one disease, that of being found out."

"Evolution is not a force but a process, not a cause but a law."

"I believe the recipe for happiness to be just enough money to pay the monthly bills you acquire, a little surplus to give you confidence, a little too much work each day, enthusiasm for your work, a substantial share of good health, a couple of real friends, and a wife and children to share life's beauty with you."

"It is not enough to do good; one must do it in the right way. "

"The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without and to depart. "

"Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect. "

"The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made it. "

"Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way."

"The size of a man can be measured by the size of a thing that makes him angry. "

"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him... The small reform may become the enemy of the great one... The most frightful idea that has ever corroded human nature-the idea of eternal punishment."

"Deeper than men’s opinions are the sentiment and circumstances by which opinion is predetermined. "

"Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way. "

"Iron chain of silent habit. "

"The finger of the atheists' own divinity, Reason, wrote on the wall the appalling judgments that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken."

"No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. "

"In politics the choice is constantly between two evils. "

"It makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place, or in the second place. "

"The small reform may become the enemy of the great one. "

"The most frightful idea that has ever corroded human nature - the idea of eternal punishment. "

"You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration."

"Three things matter in a speech; who says it, how he says it, and what he says – and, of the three, the last matters the least. "

"Who begins life by stifling his convictions is in a fair way for ending it without any convictions to stifle. "