Great Throughts Treasury

"A young person is a person with nothing to learn one who already knows that ice does not chill and fire does not burn... It knows it can spend six hours in the sun on its first day at the beach without ending up a skinless beet, and it knows it can walk barefoot through the barn without running a nail in its feet. . . Meanwhile psychologists grow rich writing that the young are ones' should not undermine the self-confidence of which."

"An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks."

"Abracadabra, thus we learn, the more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you're given, the less you lead, the more you're driven, the more destroyed, the more they feed,the more you pay, the more they need the more you earn, the less you keep, and now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul should take if the tax collector hasn't got it before I wake."

"And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;"

"Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach, and it is much more interesting than any other form of speech, because suppose you eschew gossip and just say Mr. Smith is in love with his wife. Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life, but suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever, why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever."

"Any hound a porcupine nudges can't be blamed for harboring grudges. I know one hound that laughed all winter at a porcupine that sat on a splinter."

"And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light, and if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night."

"And I have no desire to get ugly, but I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly."

"And one of his partners asked ''Has he vertigo?'' and the other glanced out and down and said ''Oh no, only about ten feet more.''"

"And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons."

"And the only perfect one ever born. Second arrived this evening at half-past nine. Everybody is doing fine. Is it a boy, or quite the reverse? You can call in the morning and ask the nurse."

"And that's what parents were created for."

"And what really turns my corpuscles to ice, I carry around clippings and read them to people twice. And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner, and the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be barrener. Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?"

"And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious."

"Baclli swarm within my portals such as ne'r conceived by mortals, but, bred by scientists, wise and hoary in some Olympian laboratory. Bacteria as large as mice with feet of fire and heads of ice, who never interrupt for slumber their stomping, elephantine rumba."

"At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station and not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation."

"Basketball, a game which won't be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo."

"Any kiddies in school can love like a fool, but hating, my boy, is an art."

"Belinda lived in a little white house, with a little black kitten and a little gray mouse, and a little yellow dog and a little red wagon, and a realio, trulio, little pet dragon."

"Behold the hippopotamus! We laugh at how he looks to us, and yet in moments dank and grim, I wonder how we look to him."

"Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads and not the road."

"Being a father is quite a bother, but I like it, rather."

"Bankers are just like everyone else only richer."

"Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears, and Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs, Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage, but Custard cried for a nice safe cage."

"Bugs. Adam had'em."

"Bitten into and returned to the box."

"But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American."

"Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for."

"Camped on a tropic riverside, one day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile.""

"Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you."

"Celery, raw, develops the jaw, but celery, stewed, is more easily chewed."

"Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny- Have you ever tried to buy them without money?"

"Discretion is the better part of virtue, Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you."

"Daybreak is one of the greatest disadvantages of living under the solar system: It means having to get up almost the very minute you go to bed, And bathe and shave and scrub industriously at your molar system And catch a train and go to the office an"

"Dogs display reluctance and wrath if you try to give them a bath. They bury bones in hideaways and half the time they trot sideaways."

"Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."

"Either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow."

"Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is."

"Elephants are useful friends: they have handles on both ends."

"Don't cry darling, it's blood all right."

"Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?"

"Every Englishman knows one thing - that to be an Englishman is the best thing there is."

"First let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder, this child is a marvel, a matchless wonder. A staggering child, a child astounding, dazzling, diaperless, dumfounding, stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed, a child to stagger and flabbergast, bright as a button, sharp as a thorn,"

"Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasn't a baby ought to have a baby, which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie, the idea apparently being that just by being fruitful. You are doing something beautiful, which if it is true means that the common housefly is several million times more beautiful than me or you."

"God in his wisdom made the fly and then forgot to tell us why"

"Good wine needs no bush, and perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot."

"Family: A unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold."

"Fear not the thunder, little one. It's weather, simply weather; it's friendly giants full of fun clapping their hands together."

"Hark to the sky of a seagull! He cries because he's not an eagle. Oh, what if you were you silly he-gull? What would you say to your she-gull?"

"Hark, hark! the lark on windswept bark freezes against a sky of lead! Now see him stop, take one small hop, and suddenly keel over dead!"