Great Throughts Treasury

"Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Popularity: The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The possibilities of being different from what one is are infinite. Once one has negated oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices." - Hannah Arendt

"We may remember what the Romans... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past." - Hannah Arendt

"The relative meaning of two physical facts in a emotionally controlled relation always creates the phenomenon of a third fact of a higher order, just as two musical sounds, heard simultaneously create the phenomenon of a third, fourth or fifth. The nature of this higher third is non-physical. In a sense it is magic. Each such phenomenon always overshadows the material qualities and the limited meaning of the basic factors from which it has sprung. For this reason Art expresses the highest quality of the spirit when it is surreal in nature; or, in terms of the visual arts, when it is of a surreal plastic nature." - Hans Hoffman

"The main objection to the theory of pure visualization is our thesis that the non-Euclidean axioms can be visualized just as rigorously if we adjust the concept of congruence. This thesis is based on the discovery that the normative function of visualization is not of visual but of logical origin and that the intuitive acceptance of certain axioms is based on conditions from which they follow logically, and which have previously been smuggled into the images. The axiom that the straight line is the shortest distance is highly intuitive only because we have adapted the concept of straightness to the system of Eucidean concepts. It is therefore necessary merely to change these conditions to gain a correspondingly intuitive and clear insight into different sets of axioms; this recognition strikes at the root of the intuitive priority of Euclidean geometry. Our solution of the problem is a denial of pure visualization, inasmuch as it denies to visualization a special extralogical compulsion and points out the purely logical and non-intuitive origin of the normative function. Since it asserts, however, the possibility of a visual representation of all geometries, it could be understood as an extension of pure visualization to all geometries. In that case the predicate "pure" is but an empty addition, since it denotes only the difference between experienced and imagined pictures, and we shall therefore discard the term "pure visualization." Instead we shall speak of the normative function of the thinking process, which can guide the pictorial elements of thinking into any logically permissible structure." - Hans Reichenbach

"Much water passes by the mill that the miller perceives not." - Italian Proverbs

"No book was so bad, but some good might be got out of it." - Italian Proverbs

"One enemy is too many and a hundred friends aren't enough." - Italian Proverbs

"One good morsel and a hundred vexations." - Italian Proverbs

"One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon." - Italian Proverbs

"Tell me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are." - Italian Proverbs

"The devil is bad because he is old." - Italian Proverbs

"The fruit of a good tree is also good." - Italian Proverbs

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." - Italian Proverbs

"The thief's wife does not always laugh." - Italian Proverbs

"The world is governed with little brains." - Italian Proverbs

"Two cocks in one yard do not agree." - Italian Proverbs

"Two women and a goose make a market." - Italian Proverbs

"Voice of one, voice of none." - Italian Proverbs

"When a wife sins the husband is never innocent." - Italian Proverbs

"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs

"Where there is no temptation there is no glory." - Italian Proverbs

"Who seeks a quarrel will find it near at hand." - Italian Proverbs

"In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island...No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"A small oversight, but it proved fatal. Small oversights often do." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Being a cult figure in one's own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up: in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.' 'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes.' 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Come, let it pass then,' said Frodo. 'But now we seem to have come to the point, you and I, Smeagol. Tell me. Can we find the rest of the way by ourselves? We're in sight of the pass, of a way in, and if we can find it now, then I suppose our agreement can be said to be over. You have done what you promised, and you're free: free to go back to food and rest, wherever you wish to go, except to servants of the Enemy. And one day I may reward you, I or those that remember me.' 'No, no, not yet,' Gollum whined. 'O no! They can't find the way themselves, can they? O no indeed. There's the tunnel coming. Smeagol must go on. No rest. No food. Not yet." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story..." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"If thou hadst thy will what wouldst thou reserve? said Manwe. Of all thy realm what dost thou hold dearest? All have their worth, said Yavanna, and each contributes to the worth of the others. But the kelvar can flee or defend themselves, whereas the olvar that grow cannot. And among these I hold trees dear. Long in the growing, swift shall they be in the felling, and unless they pay toll with fruit upon their bough little mourned in their passing. So I see in my thought, would that the trees might speak on behalf of all things that have roots, and punish those that wrong them!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien