Great Throughts Treasury

"Nothing which we can imagine about Nature is incredible."

"Our fathers used to say that the master's eye was the best fertilizer."

"Simple diet is best."

"Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work."

"The best plan is to profit by the folly of others."

"The brain is the citadel of the senses: this guides the principle of thought."

"The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach."

"The desire to know a thing is heightened by its gratification being deferred."

"The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils, even if equal in number."

"The graceful tear that streams for others.' Man is the weeping animal born to govern all the rest."

"The great business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements."

"The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another."

"The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honor, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon. "

"The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others."

"The only certainty is that nothing is certain. "

"The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them."

"The waters deluge man with rain, oppress him with hail, and drown him with inundations; the air rushes in storms, prepares the tempest, or lights up the volcano; but the earth, gentle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks with flowers and his table with plenty; returns with interest every good committed to her care, and though she produces the poison, she still supplies the antidote; though constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of man than his necessities, yet, even to the last, she continues her kind indulgence, and when life is over she piously covers his remains in her bosom."

"The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it."

"Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish and no more and the same plain and simple: for surely this huddling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundried sauces are more dangerous than that."

"This only is certain, that there is nothing certain; and nothing more miserable and yet more arrogant than man. "

"To enrich a favor by a courteous manner in conferring it."

"To laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day from his birth, and then it is looked upon as a miracle of precocity."

"True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written in writing what deserves to be read and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it. "

"War should neither be feared nor provoked."

"We listen with deep interest to what we hear, for to man novelty is ever charming."

"We live by reposing trust in each other."

"We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off."

"Wine maketh the band quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things... Wine takes away reason, engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations."

"With a grain of salt. [To accept a statement with doubt.]"

"A short death is the sovereign good hap of human life."

"All men carry about them that which is poyson to serpents: for if it be true that is reported, they will no better abide the touching with man's spittle than scalding water cast upon them: but if it happed to light within their chawes or mouth, especially if it come from a man that is fasting, it is present death."

"Always something new out of Africa."

"And that all seas are made calme and still with oile; and therefore the Divers under the water doe spirt and sprinkle it abroad with their mouthes because it dulceth and allaieth the unpleasant nature thereof, and carrieth a light with it."

"As touching peaches in general, the very name in Latine whereby they are called Persica, doth evidently show that they were brought out of Persia first."

"Bears when first born are shapeless masses of white flesh a little larger than mice, their claws alone being prominent. The mother then licks them gradually into proper shape."

"Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill,?the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows,?when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work."

"Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison."

"Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough."

"His last day places man in the same state as he was before he was born; not after death has the body or soul any more feeling than they had before birth."

"Hope is a working-man's dream."

"Hope is the dream of a waking man."

"Hope is the pillar that holds up the world."

"How many things... are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?"

"Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?"

"It has passed into a proverb, that wisdom is overshadowed by wine."

"It is asserted that the dogs keep running when they drink at the Nile, for fear of becoming a prey to the voracity of the crocodile."

"It is generally admitted that the absent are warned by a ringing in the ears, when they are being talked about."

"It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,?a practice which has now passed into a proverb. It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms?. Under these circumstances, they say that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one latchet too few. The next day, the shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticize the leg; upon which Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion beyond the shoes, ?a piece of advice which has equally passed into a proverbial saying."

"It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passersby in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms..."

"Licking a cub into shape."