Great Throughts Treasury

"We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack."

"What can the Creator see with greater pleasure than a happy creature?"

"What could a woman's head contrive which it would not know how to excuse?"

"What is a hero without love for mankind?"

"When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had grown and was now come to years of understanding, the Father sent it at once into foreign countries: and here it recognized at once the Good which in its Father's house it had possessed, and had not been conscious of."

"When the heart dares to speak, it needs no preparation."

"While Fell was reposing himself in the hay, a reptile concealed bit his leg as he lay; but, all venom himself, of the wound he made light, and got well, while the scorpion died of the bite."

"Who cannot resolve upon a moment's notice to live his own life, he forever lives A slave to others."

"With the most cheerful demeanor she said the most melancholy things, and on the other hand uttered the most laughable jests with an air of deep distress. She has taken to books for refuge, which I fear will be her ruin."

"Why yes; a man indeed had furnished us with more occasions to be useful to him. God knows how readily we should have seized them. But then he would have nothing—wanted nothing - was in himself wrapped up, and self-sufficient, as angels are."

"Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!"

"Yesterday I lived, today I suffer, tomorrow I die; but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday."

"Yet gratitude, the patriarch thinks, is not a debt before the eye of God or man, unless for our own sakes the benefit had been conferred."

"Yet I am extremely dissatisfied with this portrait, and nevertheless I am satisfied with being dissatisfied with myself. Alas! that we cannot paint directly with our eyes! On the long journey from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!"