Great Throughts Treasury

"It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required."

"It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it"

"It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy."

"Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."

"Many a man in love with a dimple makes a mistake of marrying the whole girl."

"Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up your ticket if you lose."

"Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect."

"Natural Science treats of motion and force. Many of its teachings remain as part of an educated man's permanent equipment in life. Such are: (a) The harder you shove a bicycle the faster it will go. This is because of natural science. (b) If you fall from a high tower, you fall quicker and quicker and quicker; a judicious selection of a tower will ensure any rate of speed.(c) If you put your thumb in between two cogs it will go on and on, until the wheels are arrested, by your suspenders. This is machinery. (d) Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one kind comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it."

"Naturally, too, I was brought into contact, very often into quite intimate personal contact, with some of the greatest actors of the day. I don’t say it in any way of boasting, but merely because to those of us who love the stage all dramatic souvenirs are interesting. I remember, for example, that when Wilson Barrett played “The Bat” and had to wear the queer suit with the scales, it was I who put the glue on him."

"Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits."

"Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so."

"Now in my day—I mean when I was at the apogee of my reputation (I think that is the word—it may be apologee—I forget)—things were very different. What we wanted was action—striking, climatic, catastrophic action, in which things not only happened, but happened suddenly and all in a lump."

"The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is as silly and as futile as if you passed a law to send a man to jail for eating cucumber salad."

"So when I talk of acting and of the spirit of the Drama, I speak of what I know."

"Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica."

"On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing."

"So naturally I am a keen friend and student of the Drama: and I hate to think of it going all to pieces."

"The general idea, of course, in any first-class laundry is to see that no shirt or collar ever comes back twice."

"The girl? Oh, yes, certainly they saved the girl. That kind of thing was always taken care of. You see just as the lighthouse man said “God’s will be done,” his eye fell on a long coil of rope, hanging there. Providential, wasn’t it? But then we were not ashamed to use Providence in the Old Drama. So he made a noose in it and threw it over the balcony and hauled the girl up on it. I used to hook her on to it every night."

"The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything."

"The British are terribly lazy about fighting. They like to get it over and done with and then set up a game of cricket."

"The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine."

"The best definition of humor I know is: humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof. I think this is the best I know because I wrote it myself."

"The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead."

"The trouble with it is that it is becoming a mere mass of conversation and reflection: nothing happens in it; the action is all going out of it and there is nothing left but thought. When actors begin to think, it is time for a change. They are not fitted for it."

"The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica."

"The lighthouse keeper trims his lamps. How firm and quiet and rugged he looks. The snows of sixty winters are on his head, but his eye is clear and his grip strong. Hear the howl of the wind as he opens the door and steps forth upon the iron balcony, eighty feet above the water, and peers out upon the storm."

"The sorrows and disasters of Europe always brought fortune to America."

"The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born."

"What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years."

"When actors begin to think, it is time for a change. They are not fitted for it."

"Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult."

"You encourage a comic man too much, and he gets silly."

"There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit."

"There is a torture scene in it, a most gruesome thing. Harvey, as the hero, has to be tortured, not on the stage itself, but off the stage in a little room at the side. You can hear him howling as he is tortured. Well, it was I who was torturing him. We are so used to working together that Harvey didn’t want to let anybody do it but me."

"There wasn’t really; it was me; but in the darkness it was all the same, and of course the heroine herself couldn’t be there yet because she had to be downstairs getting dressed to be drowned. Then they all cried out, “Poor soul! she’s doomed,” and all the fishermen ran up and down making a noise."

"There is something about a lighthouse—the way you see it in the earlier scenes—with the lantern shining out over the black waters that suggests security, fidelity, faithfulness, to a trust. The stage used generally to be dim in the first part of lighthouse play, and you could see the huddled figures of the fishermen and their wives on the foreshore pointing out to the sea (the back of the stage)."

"We think of the noble object for which the professor appears to-night, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive anyone who will laugh at the professor."