Great Throughts Treasury

"At the beginning of a love affair, not even the neurotic is neurotic."

"Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't."

"Beauty often fades, but seldom so swiftly as the joy it gives us."

"Being Irish is, no matter how real, a pose."

"Being neurotic is like shooting fish in a barrel, and missing them."

"Between two married couples there are five possibilities for friendship: man to man, woman to woman, each man to the woman not his wife, and couple to couple. It's seldom that more than two of these will actually materialize."

"Between a man and a woman both aged fifty there are two full generations, for she might well wed a man in his seventies, and he a girl of twenty."

"Bored with your present enemies? Make new ones! Tell two of your women friends that they look alike."

"Boredom is often the cause of promiscuity and always its result."

"Broadway audiences are dependably square. "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch" always gets a laugh; spoken by a little old lady, it brings down the house."

"Cash is the one gift everyone despises and no one turns down."

"Charity is a good way of reminding God that if we can do it, He can."

"Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality."

"Courage can?t see around corners but goes around them anyway."

"Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul."

"Despair is anger with no place to go."

"Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all."

"Did that leave an undesirable taste in your mouth? Let?s take a swig."

"Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English."

"Desire is in men a hunger, in women only an appetite."

"Desire creates havoc when it is the only thing between two people, or when it is what's missing."

"Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else."

"Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend."

"Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its outer circle, and its hangers-on."

"Few of us could bear to have ourselves for neighbors."

"Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn't either."

"Few of us write great novels; all of us live them."

"Few women care what a man looks like, and a good thing too."

"For a good marriage must be falling in love many times, always with the same person."

"Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end."

"Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter."

"Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette."

"Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom."

"Groups of girls are pretty, or not; they are seldom mixed."

"Good-looking girls break hearts, and good-hearted girls mend them."

"He's in for trouble?the man whose wife is detested by all women and desired by all men."

"Happiness is like the penny candy of our youth: we got a lot more for our money back when we had no money."

"Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children."

"How can a man marry wisely in his twenties? The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born."

"How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him."

"How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them."

"I do not trust those who are above name-dropping. The suppression of small vices always exacts too high a toll."

"I often pray, though I?m not really sure Anyone?s listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He?s literary."

"If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday."

"If everyone gave a tenth of his worldly goods to the person he most admired, the rich would just get richer."

"If he suddenly falls in love with someone else, a husband may not start wanting a divorce; but if he suddenly makes a lot of money, he usually will."

"I have seen messed-up people of forty who still seemed salvageable, and children of six or seven who almost surely were not."

"I wish I'd said it first, and I don't even know who did: The only problems that money can solve are money problems."

"If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors."

"If it came true, it wasn?t much of a dream."