Great Throughts Treasury

"The wisest among us is a fool in some things."

"An acknowledged love sanctifies every little freedom; and little freedoms beget great ones."

"Romances, in general, are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment."

"What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?"

"A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates."

"A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun."

"A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive."

"A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope."

"A man may keep a woman, but not his estate."

"A wink of the right, and a nod was to indicate approbation of what he said."

"A Stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play."

"All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views."

"An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company."

"As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man."

"Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty."

"All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest."

"As long as my property taxes are high, I have to raise rents or make adjustments."

"Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it."

"Calamity is the test of integrity."

"By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her."

"Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense."

"For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence."

"For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse."

"From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured."

"Friendship is the perfection of love, and superior to love; it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, Madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship."

"Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health."

"He only who gave life has a power ever it."

"Good men must be affectionate men."

"Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache."

"Honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight."

"Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating."

"Humility is a grace that shines in a high condition but cannot, equally, in a low one because a person in the latter is already, perhaps, too much humbled."

"I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy."

"I was exceedingly affected, says he, upon the occasion. But was ashamed to be surprised by her into such a fit of unmanly weakness-so ashamed that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in-her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford!-That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner-yet love her, as I do, to frenzy!-revere her, as I do, to adoration!-These were the recollections with which I fortified my recreant heart against her-Yet, after all, if she persevere, she must conquer!-Coward, as she has made me, that never was a coward before!"

"I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free."

"If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it."

"It is better to be thought perverse than insincere."

"It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept."

"It is much easier to find fault with others, than to be faultless ourselves."

"It is a happy art to know when one has said enough. I would leave my hearers wishing me to say more rather than give them cause to show, by their inattention, that I had said too much."

"Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends."

"Love before marriage is absolutely necessary."

"Love is not a volunteer thing."

"Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun."

"Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole."

"Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor."

"Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutual participation."

"Men will bear many things from a kept mistress, which they would not bear from a wife."

"Men generally are afraid of a wife who has more understanding than themselves."

"Marry first, and love will come after is a shocking assertion; since a thousand things may happen to make the state but barely tolerable, when it is entered into with mutual affection."