Great Throughts Treasury

"To take Macaulay out of literature and society and put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London during a pestilence."

"Try to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment."

"Virtue is so delightful, whenever it is perceived, that men have found it their interest to cultivate manners, which are, in fact, the appearances of certain virtues; and now we are come to love the sign better than the thing signified, and to prefer manners without virtue, to virtue without manners."

"We are told, "Let not the sun go down in your wrath," but I would add, never act or write till it has done so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same event four-and-twenty hours after it has happened."

"We cultivate literature on a little oat meal."

"We know nothing of tomorrow, our business is to be good and happy today"

"We must despise no sort of talents; they all have their separate uses and duties; all have the happiness of man for their object; they all improve, exalt, and gladden life."

"We shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole."

"We talk of human life as a journey; but how variously is that journey performed! There are those who come forth girt, and shod, and mantled, to walk on velvet lawns and smooth terraces, where every gale is arrested and every beam is tempered. There are others who walk on the Alpine paths of life, against driving misery, and through stormy sorrows, over sharp afflictions; walk with bare feet and naked breast, jaded, mangled, and chilled."

"What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!"

"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?"

"What you don't know would make a great book."

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool."

"When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature."

"You may find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and two-pence."

"You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave."

"You never say a word of yourself, dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism."

"You remember Thurlow's answer to someone complaining of the injustice of a company. "Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick.""