Great Throughts Treasury

"Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight."

"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."

"Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them."

"Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will."

"Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial."

"Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions."

"Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning [smoldering] candle."

"Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself."

"Many are less fortunate than you’ may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower."

"Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads."

"Men still have to be governed by deception."

"Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think."

"Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers."

"Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams. If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later."

"Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism."

"Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven."

"Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking."

"Not only did he not believe in ghosts, he wasn't even afraid of them."

"Not that the oracles have ceased to speak, but men have stopped listening."

"Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever."

"Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older."

"Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer."

"Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven."

"Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was - nobody any longer wanted to be that."

"Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm."

"One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying."

"One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use."

"One has to do something new in order to see something new."

"One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind."

"One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them."

"One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them."

"People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles."

"People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws."

"People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least."

"Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it."

"Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them."

"Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy."

"Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful."

"Sickness is mankind’s greatest defect."

"So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians."

"Some men come by the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede - not because it has a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen."

"Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about."

"Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede--not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen."

"That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim."

"The “second sight” possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don’t wear trousers."

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery."

"The construction of the universe is certainly very much easier to explain than is that of a plant..."

"The doctrine of human freedom only proves incorrect assumption is sometimes preferable to another accurate. The man, of course, not free: but we need to have very deep philosophy estudado for a conception of this nature not deceived us. But this is a study for which you have time and patience only one man among a thousand, and among the hundreds who com cuentam time and patience, there is only one, perhaps, to understand the meaning of the thing. And because appearances are favorable to the doctrine of freedom, this is the most common, being the most comfortable, and will remain so in the future."

"The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things."

"The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud."