Great Throughts Treasury

"It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something."

"It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly."

"It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."

"It hath been said that an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war."

"It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents."

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."

"It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work."

"It is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other."

"It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk."

"It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma, or want of dogma, that the danger lies."

"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper."

"It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us."

"It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out."

"It is tact that is golden, not silence."

"It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds."

"It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any d_____d thing thou likest except me." This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it."

"It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get."

"It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books."

"Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible."

"Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so."

"Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes."

"Let every man be true and every god a liar."

"Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only."

"Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better."

"Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine."

"Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mould and chisel and complete a character."

"Life is not an exact science, it is an art."

"Life is one long process of getting tired."

"Life is the gathering of waves to a head, at death they break into a million fragments each one of which, however, is absorbed at once into the sea of life and helps to form a later generation which comes rolling on till it too breaks."

"Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language -- language being like the sun, which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme. There are no follies and no unreasonablenesses so great as those which can apparently be irrefragably defended by reason itself, and there is hardly an error into which men may not easily be led if they base their conduct upon reason only."

"Like feather bed betwixt a wall and heavy brunt of cannon ball."

"Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap."

"Love in your hearts as idly burns As fire in antique Roman urns."

"Love is a boy by poets styl'd; Then spare the rod and spoil the child."

"Loyalty is still the same, Whether it win or lose the game; True as a dial to the sun, Although it be not shined upon."

"Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him."

"Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God."

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature."

"'Man wants but little here below' but likes that little good-and not too long in coming."

"Man, unlike the animal, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it."

"Many, if not most, good ideas die young - mainly from neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left to shift for itself."

"Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?"

"Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die."

"Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions."

"Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental."

"Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order."

"Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself."

"Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country."

"Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk."