Great Throughts Treasury

"Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine."

"He who loses money losses much. He who loses a friend loses more. But he who loses faith loses all."

"We have to serve ourselves many years before we gain our own confidence."

"Almost any event will put on a new face when received with cheerful acceptance and no questions asked."

"Nothing is better than frustration for waking up the conscience."

"Discontent is something that follows ambition like a shadow."

"A distant destination austerely reached rarely compensates for a loved starting-point forever lost."

"A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body to discourage dangerous competition."

"Academic questions are interlopers in a world where so few of the real ones have been answered."

"Acting as your own sovereign power, grant yourself oblivion for past offences."

"Avoid membership in a body of persons pledged to only one side of anything."

"Be a sincere effort never so misguided, to laugh at it is a breach of faith with decency."

"Discontent follows ambition like a shadow."

"Dive where the water is deep."

"Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light."

"Expletives serve opinions well which are not sure enough of themselves to risk expression in restrained language."

"For a competent audience, uncommon men must have other uncommon men."

"Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity."

"By an unfailing coincidence, the man who wrongs us is a villain, and the man who does us a kindness is a saint."

"Contentment has been worn as a crown by no end of sleepy heads."

"Compliments have lost their lure by the time a man does not have to fish for them."

"Having climbed to a height, it is easier to slip from it than to stay there after the zest of striving is removed."

"He who longs for the far-away proves thereby that he has corrupted the near-at-hand."

"How often our bosom swells and our temples throb to a thought which proves itself not to be worth anything but for the exaltation we feel while the swelling and throbbing are going on, which after all is something."

"If imagination would disentangle itself from absurdities, soon we should have it harnessed to reason, pulling the same plough."

"If someone offers to furnish a sure test, ask what the test was which made the sure test sure."

"If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners."

"It is not so much tutoring that the mind needs, but clearer recognition and better use of what it already knows."

"It is only an uncivilized world that would worship civilization."

"It is the honest lies we tell?statements factually correct and essentially deceiving?which debauch our manhood and stunt our growth."

"It is when we start to discipline our mind that we discover how many undisclosed relationships it already has."

"It would be as natural for a full-grown tiger to mew as for a man released from the slavery of imitations ever to go back to his neighbor again with: ?What do you think of this? What do you advise about that??"

"If you obtain provision for yourself of spiritual abundance, don?t throw the surplus at people?s heads; feed it back into your own industry as capital for the production of more abundance."

"Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated."

"It is getting what we started to get, not the thing got, which spells success."

"Man is sadly retarded by allowable imperfections."

"It is the semi-learned who scorn the ignorant; the learned know too much about them for that."

"Man is liberated from his illusions to make room for a fresh set."

"Make a party over your negative thoughts, assuring them that they are the safest, the most cautious, company you have ever kept. At first they will swallow your flattery, but then suddenly, stricken with shame, and knowing themselves for the impostors they are, out and off they will go."

"Many a man gets weary of clamping down on his rough impulses, which if given occasional release would encourage the living of life with salt in it, in place of dust."

"Many of our intentions die after we have put their harness on."

"Many a superior brain is blockaded by inferior thoughts."

"No conscience which is a palimpsest of the consciences of others is a safe guide."

"Many of us are impersonations of what we know we ought to be."

"Memories that never ride anything but sound waves."

"Not a little of our condemnation of the acts of others is spillage from our own condemnation of our own acts."

"Only occasional hours meet our full requirements."

"Normal is the wrong name often used for average."

"Our portion of life is the whole thing for us."

"Proud souls in the true sense are never humbled by adversity."