Great Throughts Treasury

"With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his."

"Without art the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

"Woman reduces us all to the common denominator."

"Woman's dearest delight is to wound Man's self-conceit, though Man's dearest delight is to gratify hers."

"Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another."

"Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap."

"Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things."

"Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on the old footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me."

"Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself."

"You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out."

"You are the window through which you must see the world."

"You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."

"You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of Milo only to find him in the arms of the scullery maid or someone much worse. You decide that the Hermes of Praxiteles and Wagner's Tristan are not suited for young girls; and your daughter marries somebody appallingly unlike either Hermes or Tristan solely to escape from your parental protection. You have not stifled a single passion nor averted a single danger: you have depraved the passions by starving them, and broken down all the defenses which so effectively protect children brought up in freedom."

"You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub."

"You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty; but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy."

"You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death."

"You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government."

"You cannot be a hero without being a coward."

"You can lose a man like that by your own death, but not by his."

"You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it, better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."

"You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself."

"You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes."

"You have a choice between the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of the members of government. And with all due respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for gold."

"You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing."

"You can't be a hero without being a coward."

"You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it."

"You have to choose (as a voter) between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."

"You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something."

"You in America should trust to that volcanic political instinct which I have divined in you."

"You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living."

"You never can tell."

"You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could."

"You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them."

"You ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."

"You see things as they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things as they never were and ask, "Why not?""

"You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well."

"You think that you are Ann’s suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked-down quarry, the destined prey."

"You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly."

"Your father is a fool skin deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow."

"Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only frail. They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls."

"Your heart and your mouth will be in two separate parts of your body if you again forget in whose presence you stand."

"Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one: and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that they themselves are forced to reform it."

"Youth is wasted on the young."

"You're not a man, you're a machine."