Great Throughts Treasury

"A brave man is sometimes a desperado; but a bully is always a coward."

"The memory of past favors, is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful, but it soon fades away. The memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever."

"Whatever can lead an intelligent being to the exercise or habit of mental enjoyment, contributes more to his happiness than the highest sensual or mere bodily pleasures. The one feeds the soul, while the other, for the most part, only exhausts the frame, and too often injures the immortal part... Let all seen enjoyments lead to the unseen fountain from whence they flow."

"A temperate anger has virtue in it."

"A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy - the smile that accepts a lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby."

"A woman who wants a charitable heart wants a pure mind."

"An uncontrolled imagination may become as surely intoxicated by over-indulgence as a toper may do bodily with strong drink."

"Cheerfulness is health; the opposite, melancholy, is disease."

"Fun has no limits. It is like the human race and face; there is a family likeness among all the species, but they all differ."

"Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it."

"God has made sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them."

"Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend. Hope is not the man for your banker, though he may do for a traveling companion."

"Innocence is always unsuspicious."

"Mankind lives on promises."

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive."

"No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings."

"Punctuality is the soul of business."

"Self-possession is the backbone of authority."

"When a man is wrong and won't admit is, he always gets angry."

"Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience."

"A man is never astonished or ashamed that he does not know what another does; but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he knows."

"What a sight there is in that word "Smile?" It changes like a chameleon. There is a vacant smile, a cold smile, a smile of hate, a satiric smile, an affected smile; but, above all, a smile of love."

"A cheap article ain't always the best; if you want a real right down first chop, genuine thing, you must pay for it."

"A college education shows a man how devilish little other people know."

"A college education shows a man how little other people know."

"A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity."

"A feller with one idea grows rich, while he who calls him a fool dies poor."

"A knowledge of God is the foundation of all wisdom."

"A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does."

"A miss is as good as a mile."

"A power imprudently given to the executive, or to the people, is seldom or never got back."

"A small house well filled is better than an empty palace."

"A suspicious parent makes an artful child."

"A wise saw is more valuable than a whole book, and a plain truth is better than an argument."

"A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts the lover afore words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby, and assures him of a mother's love."

"Absurdities die of self-strangulation."

"Ah, sorrow, how close you tread on the heels of enjoyment?"

"All his speeches would read both ways, so that he could interpret them as he liked: so, whichever way things eventuated, he was always right."

"Always judge your fellow passengers to be the opposite of what they strive to appear to be. For instance, a military man is not quarrelsome, for no man doubts his courage; but a snob is. A clergyman is not over strait- laced, for his piety is not questioned; but a cheat is. A lawyer is not apt to be argumentative; but an actor is. A woman that is all smiles and graces is a vixen at heart : snakes fascinate. A stranger that is obsequious and over-civil without apparent cause is treacherous: cats that purr are apt to bite and scratch. Pride is one thing, assumption is another; the latter must always get the cold shoulder, for whoever shews it is no gentleman: men never affect to be what they are, but what they are not. The only man who really is what he appears to be is ? a gentleman."

"An artist has more than two eyes, that's a fact."

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

"Anything that gives power to the masses will please the masses."

"As soon as a woman begins to dress "loud," her manners and conversation partake of the same element."

"Avarice fills its purse at the expense of its belly."

"Be it remembered that we command nature, as it were, by obeying nature's laws; so the woman who would control her husband does so through obedience."

"blessed shield, that glorious institution - the rich man's terror, the poor man's hope, the people's pride, the nation's glory - Trial by Jury."

"Boys are mothers' sons. It's only gals who take after their father."

"By work you get money, by talk you get knowledge."

"Ceremony is all backbone."

"Changing one thing for another is not always reform."