Great Throughts Treasury

"Of course those that have charm don't really need brains."

"Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. And that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed."

"One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die."

"Oh, why did nobody warn me? cried Grimes in agony. I should have been told. They should have told me in so many words. They should have warned me about Flossie, not about the fires of hell. I've risked them, and I don't mind risking them again, but they should have told me about marriage. They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children."

"Old boy, said Grimes, you're in love. Nonsense! Smitten? said Grimes. No, no. The tender passion? No. Cupid's jolly little darts? No. Spring fancies, love's young dream? Nonsense! Not even a quickening of the pulse? No. A sweet despair? Certainly not. A trembling hope? No. A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi? Nothing of the sort. Liar! said Grimes."

"Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better."

"Other nations use "force"; we Britons alone use "Might."

"One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric."

"Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamor."

"Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son."

"Perhaps all our lovers are merely hints and symbols; vagabond languages scrawled on gate-posts and paving stones along the weary road that others have trampled before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond each other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us."

"Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY."

"Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher."

"Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom."

"Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally. It's just that he isn't a real person at all; he's just a few faculties of a man highly developed; the rest simply isn't there."

"Professional reviewers read so many bad books in the course of duty that they get an unhealthy craving for arresting phrases."

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored"

"Saints are simply men and women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God."

"Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all."

"Soon someone would say the fatal words, "Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed.""

"She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked."

"She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?" That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, this magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.""

"She had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?"

"She told me later that she had made a kind of note of me in her mind, as, scanning the shelf for a particular book, one will sometimes have one's attention caught by another, take it down, glance at the title page and saying I must read that, too, when I've the time, replace it and continue the search."

"So the two of them went to London by the early morning train. 'Let's surprise her,' said Nigel, but Cedric telephoned first, wryly remembering the story of the pedantic adulterer - 'My dear, it is I who am surprised; you are astounded.'"

"So you never got to wherever it was. Weren't you terribly disappointed, Sebastian?"

"So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian."

"She was daily surprised by the things he knew and the things he did not know; both, at the time, added to his attraction."

"That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty."

"That is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back."

"Success in this world depends on knowing exactly how little effort each job is worth... distribution of energy."

"That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down."

"The anguished suspense of watching the lips you hunger for, framing the words, the death sentence, of sheer triteness!"

"The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mount glittered and lay still in the silent valley."

"That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian, and thus it came about, that morning in June, that I was lying beside him in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke from his lips drift up into the branches."

"That kernel of gaiety that never breaks."

"Ten men of revolting appearance were approaching from the drive. They were low of brow, crafty of eye, and crooked of limb. They advanced huddled together with the loping tread of wolves, peering about them furtively as they came, as though in constant terror of ambush; they slavered at their mouths, which hung loosely over the receding chins, while each clutched under his ape-like arm a burden of curious and unaccountable shape. On seeing the Doctor they halted and edged back, those behind squinting and molting over the companions' shoulders."

"The audiences certainly have [declined]. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows."

"The best I can tell you in that way is that IÂ’m much more at ease with fellow-Catholics than I am with heathens or Protestants. One has so many basic assumptions in common that thereÂ’s so much that doesnÂ’t need saying, and when youÂ’re talking to even the most amusing and intelligent heathen you suddenly find that something youÂ’ve said has no meaning at all to them."

"The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere, he said. Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad."

"The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each glucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold."

"The human soul enjoys these rare, classical periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves - the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleepwalker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outside eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a sides treet, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share."

"The langor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it."

"The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free."

"The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly-- perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless."

"The sound of the English country families baying for broken glass."

"The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests."

"The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed."

"The truth is that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it is convenient to segregate a certain number of the young of the nation while they are growing up."

"The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him."