Great Throughts Treasury

"To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him - two."

"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."

"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? But the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong."

"A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner."

"You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do."

"How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality."

"Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes."

"A man who has reformed himself has contributed his full share towards the reformation of his neighbor."

"Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes."

"Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty."

"Every man is a solitary in his grief."

"How reluctantly the mind consents to reality!"

"I can find no room in my cosmos for a deity save as a waste product of human weakness, the excrement of the imagination."

"If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things."

"It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude."

"It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest."

"Justice is too good for some people and not good enough for the rest."

"Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends."

"Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers."

"Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it."

"No great man is ever born too soon or too late."

"No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble."

"Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers."

"Nothing ages a man like living always with the same woman."

"One can always trust to time. Insert a wedge of time and nearly everything straightens itself out."

"People who have reformed themselves has contributed their full share towards the reformation of their neighbor."

"Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague."

"The business of life is to enjoy oneself; everything else is a mockery."

"The longer one lives, the more one realizes that nothing is a dish for every day."

"The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying."

"The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher."

"There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself, he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide."

"They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves."

"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes?"

"Why always "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say "not yet"?"