Great Throughts Treasury

"Never lie when the truth is more profitable."

"Never open the door to those who open them even without your permission."

"Never saw off the branch you are on, unless you are being hanged from it."

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

"Oh, to know God's private address."

"Oh, to be old again, said the young corpse."

"On every summit, you are on the brink of an abyss."

"Only the dead can be resurrected. It's more difficult with the living."

"Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world."

"Pants get shiny even on a throne."

"People find life entirely too time-consuming."

"Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people."

"Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals."

"Politics: a Trojan horse race"

"Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard."

"Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand."

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

"Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?"

"Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing."

"Telling lies does not work in advertising."

"The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens."

"The exit is usually where the entrance was."

"The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints."

"The first condition of immortality is death."

"The first symptom of death is birth."

"The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius."

"The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones."

"The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him."

"The weakest link in the chain is also the strongest. It can break the chain."

"The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."

"The window on the world can be covered by a newspaper."

"Their bodies were so close together that there was no room for real affection."

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

"There are grammatical errors even in his silence."

"Think before you think."

"Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody."

"To torture a man, you have to know his pleasures."

"There were grammatical errors even in his silence."

"To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?"

"We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to apply it."

"When everything has to be right, something isn't."

"Value your words. Each one may be the last."

"We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing."

"We know we are on the wrong track, but we are compensating for this shortcoming by accelerating."

"When reasons are weak, attitudes stiffen."

"When myth meets myth, the collision is very real."

"When gossip gets old it becomes a myth."

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy."

"When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet."

"Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured."