Great Throughts Treasury

"No man profits but by the loss of others."

"No wind favors him who [addresses his voyage to no certain port] has no destined port."

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which [we least know]a man knoweth least."

"Nothing so deeply imprints anything in our memory as the desire to forget it."

"Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming a mean and illiterate soul."

"Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?"

"Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?"

"Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely, see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety."

"One must learn to endure what can't be escaped."

"Other passions have objects to flatter the, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation."

"Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so also the smallest affairs disturb us most."

"The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise."

"The lack of wealth is easily repaired; but the poverty of the soul is irreparable."

"The laws of conscience, which we say are born of nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him, cannot break loose from them without remorse, or apply himself to them without self-satisfaction."

"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene."

"The most universal quality is diversity."

"The oldest and best known evil is always more tolerable than a new and unexperienced one."

"The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable."

"The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve."

"The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings."

"The soul [that] has no established aim loses itself."

"The thing [of which I have most fear] I fear most is fear."

"The things are most dear to us which have cost us most."

"The truth is that it is contrary to the nature of love if it is not violent, and contrary to the nature of violence if it is constant."

"The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what ever man persuades another man to believe."

"The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity."

"The virtue of the soul does not insist in flying high, but in walking orderly."

"The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable."

"The way of the world is to make laws, but follow customs."

"The world is nothing but variety and dissimilarity; but vices are all alike, insomuch as they are all vices."

"The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul."

"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."

"There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."

"There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try all the ways that can lead us to it. When reason fails us, we use experience.. which is a weaker and less dignified means. But truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead us to it."

"There is no existence that is constant, either of our being or of that of objects. And we, and our judgment, and all mortal things go on flowing and rolling unceasingly. Thus nothing certain can be established about one thing by another, both the judging and the judged being in continual change and motion."

"There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; an should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?"

"There is still more intelligence needed to teach others than to be taught."

"To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and province, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, to rule, to lay up treasure, to build, are at most but little appendices and props."

"To forbid anything is the way to make us [have a mind] long for it."

"True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything."

"Truth is the first and fundamental part of virtue. We must love it for itself."

"Valor has its limits like the other virtues, and these limits once transgressed, we find ourselves on the path of vice; so that we may pass through valor to temerity, obstinacy, and madness, unless we know its limits well - and they are truly hard to discern near the borderlines."

"Valor is stability, not of arms and of legs, but of courage and the soul."

"Vice leaves repentance in the soul like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and hot of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin."

"Virtue’s tool is moderation, not strength."

"We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another’s than our own. Man can in nothing fix and conform himself to his mere necessity. Of pleasure, wealth and power he grasps at more than he can hold; his greediness is incapable of moderation."

"We are never [present with] at home, we are always beyond [ourselves]. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be."

"We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless."

"We carry our fetters with us."

"We do not aim to correct the man we hang; we correct and warn others by him."