Great Throughts Treasury

"The maxim ?Nothing avails but perfection? may be spelt shorter: ?Paralysis.?"

"The march can create your own universe."

"The maxim of the British people is "Business as usual.""

"The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister."

"The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black."

"The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this?a year ago our position looked forlorn, and well-nigh desperate, to all eyes but our own. Today we may say aloud before an awe-struck world, 'We are still masters of our fate. We still are captain of our souls.'"

"The mind is like the stomach, you should only ask as much as it can digest."

"The most important thing about education is appetite."

"The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy."

"The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground."

"The next day Churchill had an orchid delivered to her, along with the message: I would be obliged if you would pin this on your white meat."

"The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory."

"The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go."

"The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs."

"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the honesty and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often deceived by the collapse of our hopes and turning our plans; but with this shield, whatever fate brings us, NIV will always be in the ranks of honor."

"The object of presenting medals, stars, and ribbons is to give pride and pleasure to those who have deserved them. At the same time a distinction is something which everybody does not possess. If all have it it is of less value ? A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow."

"The only recorded instance in history of a rat swimming towards a sinking ship."

"The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes."

"The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity."

"The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash."

"The outside of a horse is good for the inside of man."

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

"The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home."

"The picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stern; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel; the scent of murder."

"The plot is certainly sensational, but it hardly represents what actually happened. It is difficult to believe that the European emigrants by whom America has been populated took away with them all the virtues and left behind them all the vices of the races from which they had sprung; or that a few generations of residence on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is sufficient to create an order of beings definitely superior in morals, in culture, and in humanity to their prototypes in Europe. The American"

"The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war."

"The poor girl does not know how to have a conversation. Unfortunately, she does know how to speak."

"The point [is] largely scientific in character ?[concerning] the methods which can be invented or adopted or discovered to enable the Earth to control the Air, to enable defence from the ground to exercise control?indeed dominance?upon airplanes high above its surface. ? science is always able to provide something. We were told that it was impossible to grapple with submarines, but methods were found ? Many things were adopted in war which we were told were technically impossible, but patience, perseverance, and above all the spur of necessity under war conditions, made men?s brains act with greater vigor, and science responded to the demands."

"The Prime Minister has nothing to hide from the President of the United States."

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

"The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible."

"The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it."

"The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience."

"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."

"The Russians will sweep through your country and your people will be liquidated. You are on the verge of annihilation."

"The quotations when engraved upon the memory give good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."

"The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult."

"The shadow of victory is disillusion."

"The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all."

"The soft underbelly of the Axis."

"The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains."

"The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss."

"The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put."

"The Russians will try all the rooms in a house, enter those that are not locked, and when they come to one that cannot be broken into, they will withdraw and invite you to dine genially that same evening."

"The schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

"The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny."

"The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hard-bitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War."

"The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks."

"The surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill; Most of those evils we poor mortals know, From doctors and imagination flow."

"The Times is speechless, and takes three columns to express its speechlessness."