Great Throughts Treasury

"It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England."

"It may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men."

"It tastes well, the bread which you earn yourself."

"It was in his own home that Fielding knew and loved her (Amelia); from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction."

"It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarreled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now"

"It was the women's tribute to the war. It taxes both alike, and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women."

"It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills."

"It's not dying for faith that's so hard, it's living up to it."

"Jos growled from under the counterpane to know what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged, that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his interrupted slumbers."

"Keats spoke for all time when he said, ?A thing of beauty is a joy forever.?"

"Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with proud stomachs."

"Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! -- what worthy man does not keep those in mind?"

"Know ye the willow-tree, Whose grey leaves quiver, Whispering gloomily To yon pale river? Lady at even-tide Wander not near it: They say its branches hide A sad, lost spirit!"

"Laughter is like a bright light in the house."

"Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."

"Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed."

"Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb."

"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have."

"Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting."

"Life is soul's nursery- its training place for the destinies of eternity."

"Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates their charm and sweetness."

"Love makes fools of us all, big and little."

"Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?"

"Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor."

"Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector."

"Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labor."

"Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire."

"Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, 'I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr Raine.' Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, 'Boy, take down your pants...' Well, well..."

"Money has only a different value in the eyes of each."

"Mother is God in the eyes of a child."

"Mr. Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality."

"Mrs. O?Dowd, the good housewife, arrayed in curl papers and a camisole, felt that her duty was to act, and not to sleep, at this juncture. Time enough for that, she said, when Mick?s gone; and so she packed his travelling valise ready for the march, brushed his cloak, his cap, and other warlike habiliments, set them out in order for him; and stowed away in the cloak pockets a light package of portable refreshments, and a wicker-covered flask or pocket-pistol, containing near a pint of a remarkably sound Cognac brandy, of which she and the Major approved very much; ... Mrs. O?Dowd woke up her Major, and had as comfortable a cup of coffee prepared for him as any made that morning in Brussels. And who is there will deny that this worthy lady?s preparations betokened affection as much as the fits of tears and hysterics by which more sensitive females exhibited their love, and that their partaking of this coffee, which they drank together while the bugles were sounding the turn-out and the drums beating in the various quarters of the town, was not more useful and to the purpose than the outpouring of any mere sentiment could be? The consequence was, that the Major appeared on parade quite trim, fresh, and alert, his well-shaved rosy countenance, as he sate on horseback, giving cheerfulness and confidence to the whole corps. All the officers saluted her when the regiment marched by the balcony on which this brave woman stood, and waved them a cheer as they passed; and I daresay it was not from want of courage, but from a sense of female delicacy and propriety, that she refrained from leading the gallant--personally into action."

"Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit."

"Never marry with the expectation of changing a person."

"Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them."

"Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?"

"'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'"

"No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it."

"No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amid this indifference and corruption. No wonder that sceptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence of such a king. No wonder that Whitefield cried out in the wilderness,?that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence on these men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle,?the good John Wesley surrounded by his congregation of miners at the pit?s mouth, or the queen?s chaplains mumbling their morning office in their anteroom, under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opening into the adjoining chamber, where the queen is dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress?s side?"

"No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardor against your little feeble remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw."

"Nobody does anything for nothing... it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody."

"Not only is the world informed of everything about you, but of a great deal more."

"Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."

"Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, and men"

"Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them: almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and girls, and their kind, tender mothers."

"Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand. The most valuable things, if they have for a long while appeared among us, do not make any impression as they are good, but give us a distaste as they are old. But when the influence of this fantastical humor is over, the same men or things will come to be admitted again by a happy return of our good taste."

"Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that provits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Aeschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts."

"O blessed idleness! Divine lazy nymph! Reach me a novel as I lie in my dressing-gown at three o'clock in the afternoon; compound a sherry-cobbler for me, and bring me a cigar! Dear slatternly, smiling Enchantress! They may assail thee with bad names?swear thy character away, and call thee the Mother of Evil; but, for all that, thou art the best company in the world!"

"Of all the vices which degrade the human character, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love of Self leads to the most monªstrous crimes and occasions the greatest misfortunes both in States and Families. As a selfish man will impoverish his family and often bring them to ruin, so a selfish king brings ruin on his people and often plunges them into war."

"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill ? of the Press, my boy, ? of the fourth estate ? There she is ? the great engine ? she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world ? her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."