Great Throughts Treasury

"Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway ? security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government."

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?... 'Yes. A drink.'"

"Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day."

"Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time."

"He wiped his face with his handkerchief, for he was quite warm from the exertion of being Chairman of the World. It had taken more running and leaping and sliding than he had imagined."

"He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty."

"Hope my country will never become an uncomfortable place for the unbeliever, as it could easily become if prayer was made one of the requirements of the accredited citizen."

"Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all."

"I am always humbled by the infinite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow."

"I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic."

"I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. Never worry about your heart till it stops beating."

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

"I am working on a new book about a boa constrictor and a litter of hyenas. The boa constrictor swallows the babies one by one, and the mother hyena dies laughing."

"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television ? of that I am quite sure."

"I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they happen to strike me."

"I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively, instead of skeptically and dictatorially."

"I distrust the slightest hint of a standard for political rectitude, knowing that it will open the way for persons in authority to set arbitrary standards of human behavior."

"I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket."

"I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat."

"I don?t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."

"I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles."

"I don?t think a President should advertise prayer. That is a different thing. Democracy, if I understand it at all, is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only half a dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy; their tranquility would be its proof."

"I don't know why people feel unhappy when the curve of a graph fails to keep going up, but they do. Even when we find something we'd like to reduce, such as highway fatalities, it doesn't always sound as though we had our heart in it."

"'I don't see how a strong foreign policy can be built around a wild flag which is the same for everybody,' complained the Latvian."

"I find it very disturbing to be advertised, as I have noticed that it is the advertised authors that stink. I am pretty sure I am going to stink from now on, and it might just as well be in Harpers as anywhere else, I suppose. A writer is like a beanplant-he has his day and then he gets stringy."

"I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand."

"I find this morning that what I most vividly and longingly recall is the sight of my grandson and his little sunburnt sister returning to their kitchen door from an excursion, with trophies of the meadow clutched in their hands?she with a couple of violets, and smiling, he serious and holding dandelions, strangling them in a responsible grip. Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists?just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts."

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."

"I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management."

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular."

"I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing. A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her. (This first pleases the lady and then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same impulse.)"

"I have known many graduates of Bryn Mawr. They are all of the same mold. They have all accepted the same bright challenge: something is lost that has not been found, something's at stake that has not been won, something is started that has not been finished, something is dimly felt that has not been fully realized. They carry the distinguishing mark ? the mark that separates them from other educated and superior women: the incredible vigor, the subtlety of mind, the warmth of spirit, the aspiration, the fidelity to past and to present. As they grow in years, they grow in light. As their minds and hearts expand, their deeds become more formidable, their connections more significant, their husbands more startled and delighted. I once held a live hummingbird in my hand. I once married a Bryn Mawr girl. To a large extent they are twin experiences. Sometimes I feel as though I were a diver who had ventured a little beyond the limits of safe travel under the sea and had entered the strange zone where one is said to enjoy the rapture of the deep."

"I have moments of hoping and dreaming that we will live to see another Golden Age, or at least Silver Age, when writers will be both gay and disciplined and when even newspapers will show an interest in the litry life."

"I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure."

"I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel."

"I shall get up on Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness... Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day."

"I wanted no interruption in the regularity of feeding, the steadiness of growth, the even succession of days. I wanted no interruption, wanted no oil, no deviation."

"I hope that Belief never is made to appear mandatory."

"I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze."

"I remember a day in class when he leaned forward, in his characteristic pose - the pose of a man about to impart a secret and croaked, ?If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!? This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?"

"I located America thirty-one years ago in a Model T Ford and planted my flag. I've tried a couple of times since to find it again, riding in faster cars and on better roads, but America is the sort of place that is discovered only once by any one man."

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."

"I was sorry for her, as I am for any who are evicted from their haunts by the younger and stronger?always a sad occasion for man or beast."

"I remember what it is like to be in love before any of love?s complexities or realities or disturbances has entered in, to dilute its splendor and challenge its perfection."

"I?m glad to report that even now, at this late day, a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me?more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears. I can remember, really quite distinctly, looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, 'This is where I belong, this is it'.?"

"I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else."

"I?m not fooled any more by an ill wind and a light that fails."

"I?ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty?everything I don?t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?"

"Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding place ? the grave, where he is impervious to embarrassments and beyond the reach of libel. I have failed to cooperate with this ideal arrangement. Through some typical bit of mismanagement, I am still alive, and the book has had to adjust to that awkward fact."