Great Throughts Treasury

"East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State."

"Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts."

"He had the artistic metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on airships when stimulated."

"He studied cities as women study their reflections."

"He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather."

"His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face."

"History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women."

"Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him."

"I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or--the color work in a ten-cent magazine."

"I know you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great. You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the brightest and best of our countrymen three generations ago, when the old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted. You proved that when you put your murderous mark upon my friend Kerner ? the wisest chap I ever knew in my life."

"If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life"

"I hated Kerner, and one day I met him and we became friends. He was young and gloriously melancholy because his spirits were so high and life had so much in store for him. Yes, he was almost riotously sad. That was his youth. When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair."

"If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York."

"If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's."

"If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on while you are left at your elevated station."

"I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2."

"It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York."

"Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence."

"It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad."

"It is said that love makes the world go 'round - the announcement lacks verification. It's wind from the dinner horn that does it."

"It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an agriculturist."

"It'll be a great place if they ever finish it."

"My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you."

"Kerner's father was worth a couple of millions. He was willing to stand for art, but he drew the line at the factory girl. So Kerner disinherited his father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner."

"Oh, come off your perch! said the other man, who wore glasses. Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it."

"Not very long ago someone invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen ? the census taker ? and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.""

"Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark."

"Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation."

"Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper."

"Ransie was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armor. The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth unconscious of its loss."

"One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas."

"Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins?those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense."

"She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed."

"She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task."

"She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm ? always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and of the cling variety."

"She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership)."

"Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds."

"Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle."

"t did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad."

"Take it from me ? he's got the goods."

"The magi, as you know, were wise men ? wonderfully wise men ? who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."

"There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference."

"There are stories in everything. I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lampposts, and newspaper stands."

"This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs."

"There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American."

"There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating."

"Well, little old Noisyville-on-the Subway is good enough for me."

"What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?"

"To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships."

"Turn up the lights ? I don't want to go home in the dark."