Great Throughts Treasury

"Then here's to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around."

"There are people who are very resourceful, at being remorseful, and who apparently feel that the best way to make friends is to do something terrible and then make amends."

"There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I'm afraid it's heading in the wrong direction."

"There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies."

"There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, and one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees, and they certainly annoy each other, but they certainly enjoy each other, yes, they pretend to flout each other, but they couldn't do without each other."

"There was a young belle of old Natchez whose garments were always in patchez; when comment arose on the state of her clothes, she drawled, "When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez!""

"There?s nothing that keeps its youth so far as I know, but a tree and the truth."

"These are enlightened days in which you can get hot water and cold water out of the same spigot, and everybody has something about which they are proud to be broad-minded but they also have other things about which you would be wasting your breath if you tried to convince them that they were a bigot."

"There is something about a martini, ere the dining and dancing begin; and to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth - I think that perhaps it's the gin."

"There is only one thing for a man to do who is married to a woman who enjoys spending money, and that is enjoy earning it."

"They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests."

"They take the paper and they read the headlines, so they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of bread lines, and they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball"

"They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can."

"Time is like the ocean, always there, always different."

"Time is timelessness for you; calendars for the human; what's a year, or thirty, to loveliness made woman?"

"To lave in the wave, majestic and chilly, tomorrow I crave; but today it is silly. It is pleasant to look at the ocean; tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it."

"We love the kindly wind and hail, the jolly thunderbolt, we watch in glee the fairy trail of ampere, watt, and volt."

"Very Like a Whale - One thing that literature would be greatly the better for would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor. Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts, can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else. What foes it mean when we are told that the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold? In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience to know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians. However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity, we'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity. Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things, But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings. No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof; Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof? Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most, Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host. But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them. That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson; They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison, and they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm, and after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly, what I mean by too much metaphor and simile."

"To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is."

"We'll All Feel Better By Wednesday: Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy, you've had about seven hours' sleep since Friday, no wonder you feel that lost sensation; you're sunk from a riot of relaxation."

"When I look at you every aged phrase is new, and there are moments when it seems I've married one of Shakespeare's dreams."

"Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance."

"When called by a panther, don't anther."

"When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born."

"Whales have calves, cats have kittens bears have cubs, bats have bittens, swans have cygnets, seals have puppies, but guppies just have little guppies."

"When smut's to be smitten Smoot will smite for G-d, for country, and Fahrenheit."

"Where there is a monster, there is a miracle."

"When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window."

"When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it. No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it."

"Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's annointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him."

"Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies."

"Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own."

"Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.?"

"You can take it as understood that your luck changes only if it's good."

"You are much happier when you are happy than when you ain't."

"Which the Chicken and Which the Egg? He drinks because she scolds, he thinks; she thinks she scolds because he drinks; and neither will admit what's true, That he's a sot and she's a shrew."

"You don't need to interpret tea leaves stuck in a cup, to understand that people who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up."

"You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx, through funeral parlors and honky-tonks. From river to river you comb the town for a place to lay your family down."

"Who wants my jellyfish? I'm not sellyfish!"

"Women would rather be right than reasonable."

"Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy, you've had about seven hours' sleep since Friday, no wonder you feel that lost sensation; you're sunk from a riot of relaxation."