Great Throughts Treasury

"Envy deserves pity more than anger for it hurts nobody so much as itself. It is a distemper rather than a vice: for nobody would feel envy if he could help it. Whoever envies another, secretly allows that person's superiority."

"It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love."

"Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice."

"Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel. "

"Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. "

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. "

"The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy."

"Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world."

"I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted."

"Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie."

"Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable."

"When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles."

"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."

"We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second."

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."