Great Throughts Treasury

"You do not beg the sun for mercy."

"You don’t write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you’re really doing it, that’s all you’re doing: writing."

"You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die."

"You understand? One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim."

"You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war."

"You will become whatever it is you most deeply desire."

"You do not take from this universe. It grants you what it will."

"You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it, she said. And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death."

"You know it's love when you want to give joy and damn the consequences."

"You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening."

"You have the choice anyone has, die now or die later."

"You have faith in life… I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith."

"Your head is where ideas go to die."

"You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. There's an animal kind of trick. a human would remain in the trap endure the pain feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."