Great Throughts Treasury

"The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything."

"The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything."

"The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen."

"The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men."

"The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children."

"The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick."

"The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea."

"The most valuable book we can read, about countries we have visited, is that which recalls to us something that we did notice, but did not notice that we noticed."

"The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal."

"The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself."

"The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism."

"The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page."

"The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to close it again on something solid."

"The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears."

"The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich."

"The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang."

"The only defensible war is a war of defense."

"The only object of liberty is life."

"The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents."

"The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel."

"The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem."

"The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it."

"The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery."

"The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations."

"The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery."

"The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it."

"The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides."

"The past is not what it was."

"The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them."

"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are."

"The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God."

"The philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres."

"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

"The poet only desires exaltation and expansion. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head -- and it is his head that splits."

"The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshiping the single star."

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese"

"The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more."

"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."

"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."

"The present condition of fame is merely fashion."

"The principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument."

"The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines."

"The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons."

"The publisher said of somebody, 'That man will get on; he believes in himself.'... I said to him, 'Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of Supermen. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.' He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. 'Yes, there are,' I retorted, 'and you of all men ought to know them. The drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness."

"The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion."

"The Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride?"

"The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense."

"The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work."

"The real great man is the man who makes everyone feel great."

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."