Great Throughts Treasury

"For the credit of virtue it must be admitted that the greatest evils which befall mankind are caused by their crimes."

"Fortune and humor govern the world."

"For most men the love of justice is only the fear of suffering injustice."

"Friendship is a traffic wherein self-love always proposes to be the gainer."

"Fortune turns everything to the advantage of her favorites."

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

"Generosity is the vanity of giving."

"Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests."

"Gallantry consists in saying the most empty things in an agreeable manner."

"Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead."

"Fortune converts everything to the advantage of her favorites."

"Fortune never seems so blind as to those upon whom she confers no favors."

"Good and bad fortune are found severally to visit those who have the most of the one or the other."

"Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind."

"Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body, invented to cover the defects of the mind."

"Gratitude is like the good faith of traders--it maintains commerce; and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust us."

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors."

"Great actions, the luster of which dazzles us, are represented by politicians as the effects of deep design; whereas they are commonly the effects of caprice and passion. Thus the war between Augustus and Antony, supposed to be owing to their ambition to give a master to the world, arose probably from jealousy."

"Gravity is a mystery of the body invented to conceal the defects of the mind."

"Great men should not have great faults."

"Happiness is dependent on the taste, and not on things. It is by having what we like that we are made happy, not by having what others think desirable."

"Had we not faults of our own we should take less pleasure in observing those of others."

"Great minds lower, instead of elevate, those who do not know how to support them."

"Hatred is stronger than friendship."

"He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it."

"He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of good men."

"He that is never satisfied with anything, satisfies no one."

"He is safe who admits no one to his confidence."

"He who refuses praise the first time that it is offered does so because he would hear it a second time."

"Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while."

"High titles debase, instead of elevate, those who know not how to support them."

"Hope is the last thing that dies in man; and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end."

"High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light."

"Honest people will respect us for our merit: the public, for our luck."

"How unhappy the woman who is in love and virtuous at the same time!"

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."

"How rare true love maybe, it is less so than true friendship."

"How comes it that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted to the same person?"

"How is it that we remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not remember how often we have recounted it to the same person?"

"However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life."

"However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious, or impute crimes to it."

"However great the advantages which nature bestows on us, it is not she alone, but fortune in conjunction with her, which makes heroes."

"However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else."

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship."

"However glorious an action in itself, it ought not to pass for great if it be not the effect of wisdom and intention."

"However resplendent an action may be, it should not be accounted great unless it is the result of a great design."

"Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others."

"Humility is the altar upon which God wishes that we should offer Him His sacrifices."

"I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don't know where I would be without it."

"I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment."