Great Throughts Treasury

"After all there is but one race - humanity."

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

"Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?"

"Nothing is more depressing than the conviction that one is not a hero."

"The difficulty in life is the choice."

"So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn't look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end."

"A very slight change in our habits is sufficient to destroy our sense of our daily reality, and the reality of the world about us; the moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine."

"The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be that dogma draws a circle round the mind."

"This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, - There's nothing true but Heaven."

"A great artist is always before his time or behind it."

"A literary movement consists of five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other cordially."

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

"A Persian's heaven is easily made: 'Tis but black eyes and lemonade."

"Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all."

"All of a sudden now, every night seems to be picking up and picking up so we're happy, it's great to have the students back."

"Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end."

"All reformers are bachelors."

"Art is not Nature, art is Nature digested. Art is a sublime excrement."

"But I think I had the ability to be an artist before my mental illness ever took hold. I was a great con artist in deceiving myself, but through art therapy I was able to use a medium other than drugs to express myself. I try to live outside the box, and whether mental illness is driving that or not, I don't know."

"Celibates replace sentiment by habits"

"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France — France is the only school of Art."

"Earl lunged at them and had them both by the shoulders and the shirts, ... That's when the fight broke out. All I seen was Eli and Earl going at it."

"Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do."

"Genius and stupidity never stray from their respective paths; talent wanders to and fro, following every light."

"God is a great expense but government would be impossible without him."

"Faith goes out of the window when beauty comes in at the door."

"Humanity is a pigsty, where lions, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate."

"I will admit that an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word."

"I have always noticed that when a fellow wants to finish a play, the only way to do it is to go away to the country and leave no address."

"He was standing like he was going to smash a bug."

"He must put his shoulder to the wheel and get it right; one more push, that was all that was wanted."

"I would lay aside the wisest book to talk to a stupid woman"

"Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but for injustice."

"I'm glad to see that we can help, but I want them to help themselves."

"If good books did good, the world would have been converted long ago."

"If there were no husbands, who would look after our mistresses?"

"It is really exciting as we will be pitting ourselves against several full-time clubs, which will generate a lot of interest for the fans... The stage is now set and the fans have been looking for a change. We set a target of about five years to get out of the Third Division, looking to the examples of Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County. That has now been achieved, but we are realistic enough to know that this time next year the club could be involved in its first ever relegation battle."

"It hurts their cause when people say that kind of thing."

"It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisel"

"It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything but an ordinary person."

"It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people."

"It would appear that practical morality consists in making the meeting of men and women as casual as that of animals."

"It's about as drastic as you can imagine... It's a real blow to the entire industry and it will probably be 20, 25 years before we get back to a sense of normalcy."

"It's going to take years before we can get into a good routine of growing timber at the rate we are harvesting timber,"

"It's detrimental from the standpoint of wood supply inventory,"

"Love — but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife — you know all about her — who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbors over the way. Where, then, is the dream?"

"Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, color, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbors over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odors, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and color extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela."

"My one claim to originality among Irishmen is that I have never made a speech."

"Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the case in a well-ordered stomach."

"My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being molded into all shapes."