Great Throughts Treasury

"No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable."

"Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others."

"We need to suffer that we may learn to pity."

"Who can confess his poverty and look it in the face, destroys its sting: but a proud poor man, he is poor, indeed."

"Our sympathy is never very deep unless founded on our own feelings. We pity, but do not enter in to the grief which we have never felt."

"Half the noblest passages in poetry are truisms; but these truism are the great truths of humanity; and he is the true poet who draws them from their fountains in elemental purity, and gives us a drink."

"Hope is love's happiness, but not its life."

"Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears but cannot trace their source. Is the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world like music?"

"Time is the great comforter of grief, but the agency by which it works is exhaustion."

"We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch."

"What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions."

"Youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity."

"A blossom full of promise is life's joy, that never comes to fruit. Hope, for a time, suns the young floweret in its gladsome light, and it looks flourishing--a little while-- 't is pass'd, we know not whither, but 't is gone."

"A brier rose whose buds yield fragrant harvest for the honey bee."

"A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble."

"A woman's fame is the tomb of her happiness."

"Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?"

"Alas! the praise given to the ear ne'er was nor ne'er can be sincere."

"Alas, we make a ladder of our thoughts, where angels step, but sleep ourselves at the foot; our high resolves look down upon our slumbering act."

"An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence."

"And this is woman's fate: all her affections are called into life by winning flatteries, and then thrown back upon themselves to perish; and her heart, her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness, is left to bleed or break!"

"Are we not like the actor of old times, who wore his mask so long his face took its likeness?"

"Childhood, whose very happiness is love."

"Delicious tears! The heart's own dew."

"Do anything but love; or if thou lovest and art a woman, hide thy love from him whom thou dost worship; never let him know how dear he is; flit like a bird before him; lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower; but be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird, when caught and caged, be left to pine neglected and perish in forgetfulness."

"Down she bent her head upon an arm so white that tears seemed but the natural melting of its snow, touched by the flushed cheek's crimson."

"Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean."

"Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present."

"Eyes that droop like summer flowers."

"Few, save the poor, feel for the poor."

"Had he not long read the heart's hushed secret in the soft, dark eye, lighted at his approach, and on the cheek, coloring all crimson at his lightest look?"

"Hopes and regrets are the sweetest links of existence."

"How disappointment tracks the steps of hope."

"How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness."

"I can pass days stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees, watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,- - the breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs, each tree a natural harp,--each different leaf a different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving."

"I do love violets; they tell the history of woman's love."

"I have no parting sigh to give, so take my parting smile."

"I never cast a flower away, a gift of one who car'd for me; a flower--a faded flower, but it was done reluctantly."

"I think hearts are very much like glasses. If they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time."

"I will look on the stars and look on thee, and read the page of thy destiny."

"I would give worlds, could I believe one-half that is profess'd me; affection! could I think it Thee, when Flattery has caress'd me."

"In our road through life we may happen to meet with a man casting a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of another which stone he has carried in his bosom to sling against that very other's head."

"Music,--we love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch."

"My heart is its own grave!"

"My tears are buried in my heart, like cave-locked fountains sleeping."

"Oh! only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry, can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows! A dead flower will long be kept, remembrancer of looks that made each leaf a treasure."

"Oh, no! my heart can never be again in lightest hopes the same; the love that lingers there for thee hath more of ashes than of flame."

"Oh, only those whose souls have felt this one idolatry can tell how precious is the slightest thing affection gives and hallows."

"One of the greatest of all mental pleasures is to have our thoughts often divined: ever entered into with sympathy."

"Pure as the snow the summer sun-- Never at noon hath look 'd upon-- Deep, as is the diamond wave, hidden in the desert cave--Changeless, as the greenest leaves of the wreath the cypress weaves-- Hopeless, often, when most fond-- Without hope or fear beyond its own pale fidelity-- and this woman's love can be."