Great Throughts Treasury

"Adversity is more easily resisted than prosperity."

"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters."

"Age is no threat to the great men of the mind: with the Dantes and the Michelangelos, to grow older is to grow."

"Alas, how many young girls have I seen die of that!"

"Algebra applies to the clouds; the radiance of the star benefits the rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand?"

"All extreme situations have their flashes that sometimes blind us, sometimes illuminate us."

"All fruitful social impulses spring from knowledge, letters, the arts, teaching. We must make whole men, whole men, by bringing light to them that they may bring us warmth."

"All I know is that you love me...in my dreams."

"All political opinions were alike to him, and he approved them all without distinction, provided they left him alone...He had, like everybody else, his suffix is, without which nobody could have lived in those days...he was an old-bookist."

"All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word 'no.' To 'no' there is only one answer and that is 'yes.'"

"All that was neither a city, nor a church, nor a river, nor color, nor light, nor shadow: it was reverie. For a long time, I remained motionless, letting myself be penetrated gently by this unspeakable ensemble, by the serenity of the sky and the melancholy of the moment. I do not know what was going on in my mind, and I could not express it; it was one of those ineffable moments when one feels something in himself which is going to sleep and something which is awakening."

"All the crimes of man begin with the vagrancy of childhood."

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

"All things considered, sire, there is nothing to fear from these people. They are as carefree and lazy as cats. The lower classes in the provinces are restless, those in Paris are not...They are not dangerous. In sum: dependable riffraff."

"All those places that we no longer see, which perhaps we shall never see again, but whose image we have preserved, assume a painful charm, return to us with the sadness of a ghost."

"Almost all our desires, when examined, contain something too shameful to reveal."

"Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides."

"An admirable thing, the poetry of a people is the gauge of its progress. The quantity of civilization is measured by the quantity of imagination."

"An army is a strange composite masterpiece, which strength results from an enormous sum total of utter weaknesses. Thus only can we explain a war waged by humanity against humanity in spite of humanity."

"An Eastern tale says that the rose was made white by God, but since Adam looked at it while it was half open, it was ashamed and blushed. We are among those who feel speechless in the presence of young maidens and flowers, finding them almost sacred."

"An excess of sorrow, like an excess of joy, is a violent and shortlived thing. The human heart cannot remain for long in an extremity."

"An idea is a meteor; at the moment of success, the accumulated meditations which have preceded it open a little, and a spark flashes forth from it."

"An intellectual awakening prepares the way for an overthrow of facts."

"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."

"And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost--climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations."

"And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream,-- All is here begun, and finished elsewhere."

"And whatever he did, he always fell back onto this paradox at the core of his thought. To remain in paradise and become a demon! To re-enter hell and become an angel!"

"And why is it that some men just can't deal with the idea that a smart, together, professional woman like me can actually deserve their respect and still want to be thrown down on the couch and pounded like a cheap steak now and then?"

"Angel is the only word in the language that cannot be worn out. No other word would resist the pitiless use lovers make of it."

"Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right."

"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."

"Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come."

"Art is a species of valor."

"Art is now free. It must show itself deserving of its freedom."

"As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer."

"As all children do, like the vine's young shoots that cling to everything, she had tried to love."

"As for methods of prayer, all are good, as long as they are sincere."

"As long as the past has breath enough to make itself heard, Voltaire will be rejected. Listen to all these opinions: He has neither genius, nor talent, nor wit. When old he was insulted; when dead he was outlawed. He is everlastingly discussed; in that his glory consists. Is it possible to speak of Voltaire with calmness and justice? When a man rules an age and embodies progress, he is no longer the subject of criticism, but of hatred."

"As there is always more misery at the lower end than humanity at the top, everything was given away before it was received, like water on parched soil."

"Ask not the name of him who asks you for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who has need of an asylum (room)."

"At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages."

"At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner."

"At the shrine of friendship never say die, let the wine of friendship never run dry."

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings."

"Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."

"Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings."

"Beautiful with a beauty that combined all of the women with all of the angels, a beauty that would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel,"

"Because of nature's unity it has been concluded that she is simple. An error."

"Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God."

"Become like someone dying in the snow, I find pleasure in approaching last sleep"