Great Throughts Treasury

"He said that man?s heart was the only bad heart in the animal kingdom; that man was the only animal capable of feeling malice, envy, vindictiveness, revengefulness, hatred, selfishness, the only animal that loves drunkenness, almost the only animal that could endure personal uncleanliness and a filthy habitation, the sole animal in whom was fully developed the base instinct called patriotism, the sole animal that robs, persecutes, oppresses and kills members of his own tribe, the sole animal that steals and enslaves the members of any tribe."

"He stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: Ah, my malady persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth. I meant the King's grace no irreverence."

"He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true."

"He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity."

"He was a very inferior farmer when he first begun . . . and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty."

"He was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie."

"He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."

"He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming."

"He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying: Brother, go find your brother! He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other."

"He was sunshine most always-I mean he made it seem like good weather."

"He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant; though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home."

"He would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill, is work, whilst rolling nine-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service that would turn it into work, than they would resign."

"Health is a habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

"Heaven for climate, Hell for society."

"Hell's Bell's Jim!"

"Herodotus says, Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."

"High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water."

"His grammar is foolishly correct, offensively precise. It flaunts itself in the reader's face all along, and struts and smirks and shows off, and is in a dozen ways irritating and disagreeable. To be serious, I write good grammar myself, but not in that spirit, I am thankful to say. That is to say, my grammar is of a high order, though not at the top. Nobody's is. Perfect grammar?persistent, continuous, sustained?is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it."

"His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out."

"Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain."

"His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists ? utterly and entirely ? of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in heaven. Isn?t it curious?"

"His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once."

"His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere."

"His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although?like himself? a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriage?child as she was, aged only nineteen? was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it?twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living."

"His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine."

"History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal."

"History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably."

"Homely truth is unpalatable."

"Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, Give me masturbation or give me death. Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, ?To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.? In another place this experienced observer has said, ?There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.? Robinson Crusoe says, ?I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.? Queen Elizabeth said, ?It is the bulwark of virginity.? Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, ?A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.? The immortal Franklin has said, ?Masturbation is the best policy.? Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--old masters, I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, ?Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.? Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time??None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.?"

"Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own - but I wish to sell out."

"Honesty: The best of all the lost arts."

"Honor is a harder master than law."

"Hotels are the only proper places for lecturers; when I am ill-natured I so enjoy the freedom of a hotel where I can ring up a domestic and give him a quarter and then break furniture over him"

"How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact!"

"Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it."

"How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?"

"How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good."

"How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it."

"Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit I would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must be my way. [William Dean Howells]"

"How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even there from that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better."

"Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money."

"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."

"Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world."

"Human nature is all alike."

"Human pride is not worthwhile; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it."

"Humanity has unquestionably one really effective weapon?laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution?these can lift at a colossal humbug?push it a little?weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

"Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

"How empty is theory in the presence of fact."

"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever."

"History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot."