Great Throughts Treasury

"One day man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high -- some billions of years hence, say."

"One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains, and to mosques--especially to mosques.."

"One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her."

"One may make their house a palace of shame, or they can make it a home, a refuge."

"One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin."

"One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning."

"One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself."

"One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it."

"One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it--they also believed the world was flat."

"One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives."

"One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;"

"One poor chap, who had no other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the remembrance: 'Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.' But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much. ~From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Scene where the neighbor boys were lamenting over Tom's apparent drowning."

"One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke."

"One thing at a time, is my motto--and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack."

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial we."

"Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

"Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

"Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time."

"Optimist: Day-dreamer in his small clothes."

"Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else."

"Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt."

"Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

"Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized."

"Part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in."

"Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you want."

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."

"Patriotism is merely a religion--love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare."

"Patriotism is supporting you country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

"Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done."

"People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases."

"People born to be hanged are safe in water."

"People talk about beautiful relationships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort as compared with the friendship of man and wife where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine."

"People who always feel jolly, no matter where they are or what happens to them?who have the organ of hope preposterously developed?who are endowed with an uncongealable sanguine temperament?who never feel concerned about the price of corn?and who cannot, by any possibility, discover any but the bright side of a picture?are very apt to go to extremes, and exaggerate with 40-horse microscopic power."

"People who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read."

"Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can?t speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space ? none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still a couple of minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that cases I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature ? lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful."

"Perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have judgment to govern it."

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

"Persons who think there is no such thing as luck?good or bad?are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it."

"Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom."

"Photography is 90% sheer, brutal drudgery!"

"Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough."

"Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities."

"Poetry, like chastity, can be carried to far."

"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."

"Praise is well; compliment is well. But affection: that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement."

"Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same--she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there warn't no back-down to her, I judge."

"Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it anymore. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself."

"Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season."