Great Throughts Treasury

"Scotland has no unity except on the map."

"Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head."

"Seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."

"She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent."

"Sightseeing is the art of disappointment."

"Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth."

"So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."

"Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind."

"Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks."

"Someday, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you."

"Someday... after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you."

"Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange as our actual adventures."

"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences."

"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!""

"Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest."

"Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health."

"Tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white."

"Teacher, tender, comrade, wife, a fellow-farer true through life."

"That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had."

"That insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life."

"That is the bitterness of art: you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes."

"That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much."

"That was Flint's treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the ammassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell."

"The 25th day of August, 1751, about two in the afternoon, I, David Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me from their doors. Two days before, and even as yestermorning, I was like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I was served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the saying) ball directly at my foot."

"The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost."

"The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life?s plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life."

"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us."

"The burden of human life must overwhelm the barge when the man tries to dump them, the burden is back in another form of foreign and causes unbearable torment."

"The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I'm bound to say that I require an explanation of his words."

"The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember that nature was a woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred."

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?"

"The curse of humanity depends on the fact that two contradictory nature are joined together forever; that in the depths of tormented conscience must roll tragic, endless battles."

"The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep."

"The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing."

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish."

"The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)"

"The door, indeed, stood open as before; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir (perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers."

"The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise."

"The essence of love is kindness."

"The eternal altars tilt and tumble,"

"The existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ."

"The Flowers - All the names I know from nurse: gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, and the Lady Hollyhock. Fairy places, fairy things, fairy woods where the wild bee wings, tiny trees for tiny dames--these must all be fairy names! Tiny woods below whose boughs shady fairies weave a house; tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme, where the braver fairies climb! Fair are grown-up people's trees, but the fairest woods are these; where, if I were not so tall, I should live for good and all."

"The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple-tart."

"The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for and the public curiosity is sure to welcome."

"The gauger walked with willing foot, and aye the gauger played the flute; and what should Master Gauger play but "Over the Hills and Far Away"."

"The HISPANIOLA still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger--the black flag of piracy--flying from her peak."

"The horror with which blind and unjust law regards an action never attaches to the doer in the eyes of those who love him."

"The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire."

"The last I think; for, O poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend."

"The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance."