Great Throughts Treasury

"One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us." - Gustave Flaubert

"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times." - Gustave Flaubert

"She was pale all over, white as a sheet. The skin was drawn tight over her nose. She had a vague look in the eyes. And because she discovered three grey hairs on her temples, she talked about being an old woman." - Gustave Flaubert

"She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water." - Gustave Flaubert

"The day before yesterday, in the woods of Touques, in a charming spot beside a spring, I found old cigar butts and scraps of pƒt‚. People had been picnicking. I described such a scene in Novembre eleven years ago; it was entirely imagined, and the other day it came true. Everything one invents is true, you may be sure. Poetry is as precise as geometry. Induction is as accurate as deduction; and besides, after reaching a certain point one no longer makes any mistake about the things of the soul." - Gustave Flaubert

"The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft." - Gustave Flaubert

"The public wants work which flatters its illusions." - Gustave Flaubert

"Why was life so unsatisfactory? Why did everything she leaned on crumble instantly to dust?" - Gustave Flaubert

"Is the Church fulfilling a purely religious role when by its silence or friendly relationships it lends legitimacy to dictatorial and oppressive government?" - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The building of a just society means overcoming every obstacle to the creation of authentic peace." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The complete encounter with the Lord will mark an end to history, but it will take place in history." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The primacy of faith was followed by the "primacy of charity." ... But paradoxically, at the same time this was also partially responsible for the fact that for some the relationship with God was obscured and became difficult to live out and understand. Today, due partly perhaps to such impasses, the perspective of a new primacy seems to be emerging - that of hope, which liberates history because of its openness to the God who is to come." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The struggle for a just world in which there is no oppression, servitude, or alienated work will signify the coming of the kingdom ... The complete encounter with the Lord will make an end to history, but it will take place in history." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"I've learned that it doesn't matter how your husband squeezes the toothpaste, the important thing is how he squeezes you." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Life is slippery. We all need a loving hand to hold onto." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Watch the sunrise at least once a year, put a lot of marshmallows in your hot chocolate, lie on your back and look at the stars, never buy a coffee table you can't put your feet on, never pass up a chance to jump on a trampoline, don't overlook life's small joys while searching for the big ones." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"As I look back over a misspent life, I find myself more and more convinced that I had more fun doing news reporting than in any other enterprise. It is really the life of kings." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"As I stoop to lace my shoe you clout me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya lacinosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe... Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change... The progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"How far the gentlemen of dark complexion will get with their independence, now that they have declared it, I don?t know. There are serious difficulties in their way. The vast majority of people of their race are but two or three inches removed from gorillas: it will be a sheer impossibility, for a long, long while, to interest them in anything above pork-chops and bootleg gin." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"How little it takes to make life unbearable... A pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"I read the other day a book defending the Ten Commandments. The best of all arguments for them, however, was omitted. It is that there are not forty of them." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"If Wall Street really wants to dispose of John L. Lewis, let it invite him to a swell feed, hand him a fifty-cent cigar with a torpedo in it, and so burn off his eyebrows." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims - so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The only obligation I recognize in this world is my duty to my immediate family" - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"What men value in this world is not rights but privileges." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"What the South really needs is fewer scrub bulls ? on the human level." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"All well-ordered and modern states can only base themselves upon Courts of Justice and Conduct of Laws which are just, correct and geared towards the protection of the rights of individuals. Justice is a product of education." - Haile Selassie

"Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men." - Haile Selassie

"How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men. We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit. But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough. The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. The Organization's sinews have been weakened, as member states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends." - Haile Selassie

"If each and every one endeavors to cooperate and work in as much as his capacity permits, our faith rests upon the Almighty God that he would bless the results for us." - Haile Selassie

"He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

"To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

"Fair queen, at home there is none like thee, but over the mountains is Snow-white free, with seven little dwarfs, who are strange to see; a thousand times fairer than thou is she. Queen, thou art not the fairest now; Snow-white over the mountain's brow a thousand times fairer is than thou. Queen, thou art the fairest here, but not when Snow-white is near; over the mountains still is she, fairer a thousand times than thee." - Hamilton Wright Mabie