Great Throughts Treasury

"The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence."

"The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief."

"The thing we know best is that of which we are least conscious."

"The three most important parts a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money and his religious beliefs [opinions]."

"The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty, For want of fighting was grown rusty, And ate into itself, for lack Of somebody to hew and hack."

"The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being."

"The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another."

"The want of money is the root of all evil."

"The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life."

"The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence."

"The worst of governments are always the most changeable, and cost the people dearest."

"The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation."

"The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done."

"The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it."

"Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name."

"Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies."

"Then spare the rod and spoil the child."

"There are more fools than knaves in the world else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

"There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know."

"There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing."

"There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second."

"There are two classes, those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing."

"There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule."

"There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultimate ratio. Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground his faith. Nor again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from him. He says which is absurd, and declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else."

"There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men's good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men's thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it."

"There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad."

"There is no bore like a clever bore."

"There is no mistake so great as that of being always right."

"There is no mystery about art. Do the things that you can see; they will show you those that you cannot see. By doing what you can you will gradually get to know what it is that you want to do and cannot do, and so be able to do it."

"There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth."

"There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness."

"There is nothing less powerful than knowledge unattached, and incapable of application. That is why what little knowledge I have has done myself personally so much harm. I do not know much, but if I knew a good deal less than that little I should be far more powerful."

"There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought."

"There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death."

"There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come."

"There's but the twinkling of a star Between a man of peace and war."

"There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle."

"These reasons made his mouth to water."

"They [my thoughts] are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them."

"They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot."

"Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost."

"This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”"

"Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life."

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have."

"Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can it be gotten without it. Gold, or the value of what's equivalent to gold, lies at the root of wisdom, and enters so largely into the very essence of the Holy Ghost that 'no gold, no Holy Ghost' may pass as an axiom."

"Through perils both of wind and limb, Through thick and thin she follow'd him."

"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."

"To be at all is to be religious more or less"

"To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so."

"To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead."