Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not what people eat, but what they digest, that makes them strong. It is not what they gain, but what they save, that makes them rich. It is not what they read, but what they remember, that makes them learned."

"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship."

"It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has."

"It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it."

"Life is full of amusement to an amusing man."

"Know what work you want to do and go after it. The young man who gets ahead must decide for himself what he wishes to do. From his own tastes, his own enthusiasm, how he must get the motive and the inspiration which are to start him on his way to a successful life."

"Life would be a perpetual flea-hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, insinuations, and suspicions which are uttered against him."

"Living is death; dying is life. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans; on that, children; on this die, captives; on that, freemen; on this side disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed the sons of God."

"Love is more than justice."

"Mirthfulness is in the mind, and you cannot get it out. It is the blessed spirit that God has sent in the mind to dust it, to enliven its dark places, and to drive asceticism, like a foul fiend, out at the back door. It is just as good in its placed as conscience or veneration. Praying can o more be made a substitute for smiling than smiling can for praying."

"Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth."

"Men are called fools in one age for not knowing what they were called fools for averring in the age before."

"Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it."

"Music cleanses the understanding, inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself."

"Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man’s head."

"Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body."

"Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not."

"No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form."

"No man is prosperous whose immortality is forfeited. No man is rich to whom the grave brings eternal bankruptcy. No man is happy upon whose path there rests but a momentary glimmer of light, shining out between clouds that are closing over him in darkness forever."

"No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness - or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it."

"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has."

"Not what men do worthily, but what they do successfully, is what is history makes haste to record."

"Poetry is the robe, the royal apparel, in which truth asserts its divine origin."

"Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart."

"Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities."

"Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent."

"Poverty is very good in poems, but it is very bad in a house. It is very good in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life."

"Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion."

"Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one is without in himself."

"Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it."

"Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth."

"So it is that men sigh on, not knowing what the soul wants, but only that it needs something. Our yearnings are homesickness for heaven. Our sighings are sighings for God, just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slumber, not knowing that they sob for their parents. The soul's inarticulate moanings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, and having no one to tell them what it is that ails them."

"Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life."

"Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is last year's nest, from which the bird has flown."

"Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities."

"Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be saint standing in a golden niche."

"Tears are often the telescope through which men see far into heaven."

"The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct."

"The art op being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things."

"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't."

"The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no man can tell what becomes of his influence and example, that roll away from him, and go beyond his ken on their perilous mission."

"The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger."

"The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is a human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game."

"The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day."

"The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith."

"The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world, and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things."

"The hungry of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye."

"The imagination is the secret and harrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith."

"The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but.""

"The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith."