Great Throughts Treasury

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals."

"Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures."

"Oh, herbaceous treat! 'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl; Serenely full the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me,--I have dined to-day."

"Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations of the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food."

"People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom, or their lack of imagination"

"Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient."

"Praise is the best diet for us, after all."

"Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon."

"Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection."

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence."

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

"Say everything for vice which you can, magnify any pleasures as much as you please, but don't believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood, and for refreshing the faded nerve."

"Science is his forte, and omniscience his foible."

"Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today"

"She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest."

"Soup and fish explain half the emotions in life."

"Speaking of justice: Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train; it is the brightest emanation from the Gospel; it is the attribute of God."

"Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God."

"Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea."

"That knuckle-end of England,-that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur."

"That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present."

"The 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse."

"The avaricious love of gain, which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary purposes. The object is to encourage the love of labor, which is best encouraged by the love of money."

"The church is the great lost and found department."

"The dearest things in the world are our neighbor's eyes; they cost everybody more than anything else in housekeeping."

"The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."

"The haunts of happiness are varied, but I have more often found her among little children, home firesides, and country houses than anywhere else."

"The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their passions; by their deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is once formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless; and when men must trust to emotion, for that safety which reason at such times can never give."

"The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages; from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus."

"The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing."

"The man who talks of an unalterable law is probably an unalterable fool."

"The most curious offspring of shame is shyness."

"The object of preaching, is constantly to remind mankind of what they are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions; to recall mankind from the bypaths where they turn into that broad path of salvation which all know, but few tread."

"The observances of the church concerning feasts and fasts are tolerably well-kept, since the rich keep the feasts and the poor keep the fasts."

"The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death."

"The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs."

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity. Friedrich Nietzsche To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence."

"The taste for emotion may become a dangerous taste; we should be very cautious how we attempt to squeeze out of human life more ecstasy and paroxysm than it can well afford."

"The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities."

"There are many ways of being frivolous, only one way of being intellectually great; that is honest labor."

"There is but one method, and that is hard labor; and a man who will not pay that price for greatness had better at once dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or to talk of bullocks, and glory in the goad."

"There is not the least use in preaching to anyone, unless you chance to catch them ill."

"There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to; and that is, every now and then to be completely idle - to do nothing at all."

"There is the same difference between the tongues of some, as between the hour and the minute hand; one goes ten times as fast, and the other signifies ten times as much."

"They wanted to help for [surgery costs] and anything that would help me, like glasses. It was so supportive and really nice. It's so nice to know that they cared that much and wanted me to get better."

"Till subdued by age and illness, his [Sir James Mackintosh’s] conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected. He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, and everything that was wanted. His language was beautiful, and might have gone from the fireside to the press."

"To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight."

"To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can."

"To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence."

"To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness."