Great Throughts Treasury

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

"In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways."

"There is no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow."

"Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins."

"Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue."

"I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting."

"The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights."

"His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen."

"They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything."

"I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins."

"I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true."