Great Throughts Treasury

"Like a patient, etherized on a table"

"Light, light, the visible reminder of Invisible Light."

"Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter."

"Men learn little from others' experience. But in the life of one man, never the same time returns."

"Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions."

"Most contemporary novels are not really written. They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give."

"Men dislike being awakened from their death in life."

"Men have left God not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before."

"Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree."

"Men tighten the knot of confusion into perfect misunderstanding."

"Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural - but little developed - aptitude for seriousness."

"My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul."

"My friend, blood shaking my heart the awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract. By this, and this only, we have existed which is not to be found in our obituaries or in memories draped by the beneficent spider or under seals broken by the lean solicitor in our empty rooms."

"My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down."

"My life is light, waiting for the death wind, like a feather on the back of my hand."

"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think."

"My mind may be American but my heart is British."

"Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is."

"No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers."

"Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree."

"Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point."

"No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."

"No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be, am an attendant lord one that will do to swell a progress start a scene or two. Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool deferential glad to be of use. Politic cautious and meticulous, full of high sentence but a bit obtuse at times indeed almost idiculous— almost at times the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us and we drown."

"Neither way is better. Both ways are necessary."

"No peevish winter wind shall chill, no sullen tropic sun shall wither the roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only."

"No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice."

"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job."

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous- Almost, at times, the Fool."

"Not the intense moment, isolated, with no before and after, but a lifetime burning in every moment."

"Now that the lilacs are in bloom she has a bowl of lilacs in her room."

"Not fare well, but fare forward."

"O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag- It's so elegant So intelligent."

"O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

"Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other, who think the same thoughts without need of speech?"

"O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water."

"O perpetual revolution of configured stars, o perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, o world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, endless invention, endless experiment, brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; knowledge of speech, but not of silence; knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust."

"Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."

"Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation . . . In my end is my beginning."

"One starts an action simply because one must do something."

"One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest."

"One thing you cannot know: the sudden extinction of every alternative, the unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: you do not know what it is to have hope taken from you."

"One thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms."

"Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning."

"Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'"

"Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think he can turn the wheel on which he turns."

"Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment."

"Our high respect for a well-read person is praise enough for literature."

"Our emotions are only incidents in the effort to keep day and night together."

"Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions, approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings, there spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation."

"Our language, or any civilized language, is like the phoenix: it springs anew from its own ashes."