Great Throughts Treasury

"Happiness lies, first of all, in health."

"The sure foundations of the State are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue’s sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin."

"True invective requires great imagination."

"The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong."

"Progress begins with the minority. It is completed by persuading the majority, by showing the reason and the advantage of the step forward, and that is accomplished by appealing to the intelligence of the majority."

"Our common liberty is consecrated by a common sorrow. "

"Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom."

"Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind. "

"The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. "

"Age is a matter of feeling, not of years."

"A bird sang sweet and strong in the top of the highest tree, he said, I pour out my heart in song for the summer that soon shall be.But deep in the shady wood, another bird sang, I pour my heart on the solemn solitude for the springs that return no more."

"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle and patriotism is loyalty to that principle."

"Anger is an expensive luxury in which only men of a certain income can indulge."

"Anger, even when it punishes the faults of delinquents, ought not to precede reason as its mistress, but attend as a handmaid at the back of reason, to come to the front when bidden. For once it begins to take control of the mind, it calls just what it does cruelly."

"Criticism is not construction, it is observation."

"Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they cannot conquer."

"I walked beside the evening sea and dreamed a dream that could not be; the waves that plunged along the shore said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!""

"He is so old that his blood type was discontinued."

"Good taste consists first upon fitness."

"Nature makes woman to be won and men to win."

"Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper!"

"In the journey of the year, the autumn is Venice, spring is Naples, certainly, and the majestic maturity of summer is Rome."

"It is not observed in history that families improve with time."

"Our great social and political advantage is opportunity."

"Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory."

"It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage."

"O listen to the sounding sea that beats on the remorseless shore, O listen! for that sound will be when our wild hearts shall beat no more."

"Patriotism is the vital condition of national permanence."

"The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did"

"The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows."

"The test of civilization is its estimate of women."

"Virtue does not truly reward her votary if she leaves him sad and half doubtful whether it would not have been better to serve vice."

"Through all history, from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs have fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history, to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army must still march and fall, recruited only from the flower of mankind, cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in the confidence of their cause."

"While we read history we make history."