Great Throughts Treasury

"The invisible thing called a Good Name is made up of the breath of numbers that speak well of you"

"The people are never so perfectly backed, but that they will kick and fling if not stroked at seasonable times."

"The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject."

"The struggling for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman."

"The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead."

"There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill-natured"

"There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it"

"To understand the world, and to like it, are two things not easily to be reconciled."

"Weak men are the worse for the good sense they read in books because it furnisheth them only with more matter to mistake."

"When the People contend for their Liberty, they seldom get anything by their Victory but new masters. Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good Terms."

"You should live in the world so as it may hang about you like a loose garment."

"A man is to go about his own business as if he had not a friend in the world to help him in it."

"A Man may so overdo it in looking too far before him, that he may stumble the more for it."

"Hope is generally a wrong Guide, though it is very good Company by the way. It brusheth through Hedge and Ditch till it cometh to a great Leap, and there it is apt to fall and break its Bones."

"A wise man will keep his Suspicions muzzled, but he will keep them awake."

"Half the Truth is often as arrant a Lye, as can be made."

"It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first."

"Men make it such a point of honor to be fit for business that they forget to examine whether business is fit for a man."

"Modesty is oftener mistaken than any other Virtue."

"Money hath too great a Preference given to it by States, as well as by particular Men."

"Remember that Children and Fools want everything because they want Wit to distinguish: and therefore there is no stronger Evidence of a Crazy Understanding, than the making too large a Catalogue of things necessary, when in truth there are so very few things that have a right to be placed in it."

"Suspicion seldom wanteth Food to keep it up in Health and Vigour. It feedeth upon every thing it seeth, and is not curious in its Diet."

"The first mistake belonging to business is the going into it."

"The sense of ultimate truth is the intellectual counterpart of the esthetic sense of perfect beauty, or the moral sense of perfect good."

"Hope is generally a wrong Guide, though it is very good Company by the way."

"Malice is of a low Stature, but it hath very long Arms. It often reacheth into the next World, Death itself is not a Bar to it."

"Men are so unwilling to displease a Prince, that it is as dangerous to inform him right, as to serve him wrong."

"The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem."

"To the question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other answer but this, Look to your Moat."

"When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge."