Great Throughts Treasury

"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"To-day, in the estimation of many, science and art are taking the place of religion. But science and art alike are inadequate to build up character and to furnish binding rules of conduct. We need also a clearer understanding of applied ethics, a better insight into the specific duties of life, a finer and a surer moral tact." - Felix Adler

"The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art." - Gustave Flaubert

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

"What an awful thing life is, isn?t it? It?s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless." - Gustave Flaubert

"Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they be married, too." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Morality and honor are not to be confused. The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration, however violently expressed, and is quite able to take care of herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed, beset, storied, and seduced. All the more intelligent women that I know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began;" - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and Support are the same." - Hannah Arendt

"Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this ? that "objectification" is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind." - Hans Hoffman

"Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material." - Hans Hoffman

"It is the greatest injustice done to Mondrian that people who are plastically blind see only decorative design instead of the plastic perfection which characterizes his work. The whole De Stijl group from which Mondrian's art was derived must be considered a protest against such blindness." - Hans Hoffman

"I meet so many that think population growth is a major problem in regard to climate change. But the number of children born per year in the world has stopped growing since 1990. The total number of children below 15 years of age in the world are now relatively stable around 2 billion." - Hans Rosling

"The applause of the people is a blast of air." - Italian Proverbs

"The difficult thing is to get foot in the stirrup." - Italian Proverbs

"The shadow of a lord is a cap for a fool." - Italian Proverbs

"When a man has fallen into the mire, the more he flounders the more he fouls himself." - Italian Proverbs

"Who wants to win a gander, you need to weigh Drake." - Italian Proverbs

"Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"Better mistrust undeserved than rash words." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I sit beside the fire and think of all that i have seen of meadow flowers and butterflies in summers that have been of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people that will see a world that i shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before I listen for returning feet and voices at the door." -

"In one thing you have not changed, dear friend,' said Aragorn: 'you still speak in riddles.' 'What? In riddles?' said Gandalf. 'No For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying." -