Great Throughts Treasury

"Cynics are only happy in making the world as barren for others as they have made it for themselves."

"There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by."

"There is no freedom for the weak."

"Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered."

"Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious."

"The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination. "

"A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."

"Speech is the small change of Silence."

"A kiss is but a kiss now! And no wave of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly, and eat our pot of honey on the grave."

"A dainty rogue in porcelain."

"A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power."

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this, our life!"

"A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that."

"Always imitate the behavior of the winners when you lose."

"Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her."

"And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream."

"As the clouds the clouds chase; and we go, and we drop like the fruits of the tree, even we, even so."

"Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, the army of unalterable law."

"And if I drink oblivion of a day, so shorten I the stature of my soul."

"Bring the army of the faithful through."

"Behold the life at ease; it drifts, the sharpened life commands its course."

"But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes that look on it! the diverse things they see!"

"By this he knew she wept with waking eyes."

"Caricature is rough truth."

"Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harder blows, make acute and balanced observers."

"Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing."

"Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out heaven is my need."

"Chance works for us when we are good captains."

"Close, and I reckon, rather true."

"Don't just count your years, make your years count."

"Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to die for the other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment"

"Enter these enchanted woods, you who dare."

"Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: so were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled."

"Cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers."

"Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too."

"It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him"

"God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!"

"How many a thing which we cast to the ground,"

"How divine is utterance! .... As we to the brutes, poets are to us."

"I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man"

"Love that had robbed us of immortal things, this little moment mercifully gave, where I have seen across the twilight wave the swan sail with her young beneath her wings."

"Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; fain would fling the net, and fain have her free."

"Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave! Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave."

"Most, a dash between the two."

"Not a breath of wild air; still as the mosses that glow on the flooring and over the lines"

"Jealousy is love bed of burning snarl."

"In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be! Passions spin the plot: we are betrayed by what is false within."

"Just got back from a beautiful eve of winter solstice snowshoeing. My heart was lost and enlivened by both the hush of the mountainous snow world and a very fun irreverence with friends. i shared a solstice quote but did not share this one. So in the spirit of the year--happy solstice! May there be ever present and growing light in your life as nature unfolds the same in the upcoming months."

"Kissing don't last: cookery do!"

"Memoirs are the backstairs of history."