Great Throughts Treasury

"When we are treated well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritous, and that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune."

"When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion."

"When what is good comes of age, and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing."

"When you see fair hair be pitiful."

"When you've been used to doing things, and they've been taken away from you, it's as if your hands had been cut off, and you felt the fingers as are of no use to you."

"Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright the coming pest with border fortresses, Or catch your carp with subtle argument. All force is twain in one: cause is not cause unless effect be there; and action's self Must needs contain a passive. So command Exists but with obedience."

"Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike."

"Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it."

"Where you have friends you should not go to inns."

"While the arm is strong to strike and heave, let soul and arm give shape that will abide."

"While the heart beats, bruise it--it is your only opportunity."

"Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?"

"Who can prove wit to be witty when with deeper ground dullness intuitive declares wit dull?"

"Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness."

"Who shall put his finger on the work of justice, and say, "It is there"? Justice is like the kingdom of God: it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning."

"Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order."

"Who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of heaven, nor earth."

"Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self."

"Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear."

"Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them."

"Wise books for half the truths they hold are honored tombs."

"Wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest."

"With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader."

"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."

"With thy coming melody was come. This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, and that immeasurable life to know from which the fleshly self falls shriveled, dead, a seed primeval that has forests bred."

"Women know no perfect love: loving the strong, they can forsake the strong; man clings because the being whom he loves is weak and needs him."

"Women should be protected from anyone's exercise of unrighteous power . . . but then, so should every other living creature."

"Women who are content with light and easily broken ties do not act as I have done. They obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner."

"Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night."

"Worldly faces, never look so worldly as at a funeral."

"Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?"

"Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod or thundered through the skies — aught else for share of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear the growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast? No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain, nor loosed it any painless lot to gain where music's voice was silent; for thy fate was human music's self incorporate: thy senses' keenness and thy passionate strife were flesh of her flesh and her womb of Life."

"Yes! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it... There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy."

"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman--something of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you the better."

"You are a good young man, she said. But I do not like husbands. I will never have another."

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world? said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea. She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be away."

"You can't conceive what a great fellow I'm going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me."

"You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable."

"You know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation."

"You know I have duties??we both have duties??before which feeling must be sacrificed."

"You love the roses--so do I. I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush. Why will it not? Then all the valleys would be pink and white, and soft to tread on. They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be like sleeping and yet waking, all at once. Over the sea, Queen, where we soon shall go, will it rain roses?"

"You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl."

"You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that—if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is—I wouldn't give two-pence for him— here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers— whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do."

"You must learn to deal with the odd and even in life, as well as in figures."

"You must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that—if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is—I wouldn’t give two-pence for him’— here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers— ‘whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do."

"You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing."

"You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know."

"You told me the truth when you said to me once, "There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for"."

"You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature."

"Young love-making, that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to - the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung - are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life toward another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust."