Great Throughts Treasury

"Envy is but the smoke of low estate, ascending still against the fortunate."

"True joy is only hope put out of fear."

"A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others."

"A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung."

"As charity covers a multitude of sins before God, so does politeness before men."

"Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator."

"Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body."

"Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind?"

"Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness."

"I hardly know a sight that raises one's indignation more than that of an enlarged soul joined to a contracted fortune; unless it be that so much more common one, of a contracted soul joined to an enlarged fortune."

"I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others."

"No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself."

"Removing prejudices is, alas! too often removing the boundary of a delightful near prospect in order to let in a shockingly extensive one."

"Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it."

"The world is an excellent judge in general, but a very bad one in particular."

"Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them."

"The best heads can but misjudge in causes belonging to the jurisdiction of the heart."

"Some men mistake talking about sense, for talking sense."

"We are oftner deceived by being told some truth than no truth."

"Remedies for the mind, as well as the body, are often disgustful in proportion as they are salutary."

"Generosity is catching."

"Exercise is still more requisite to the health of the mind than of the body."

"Courage to think is infinitely more rare than courage to act, and yet the danger in the first case is generally imaginary, in the last real."

"They who listen to themselves are not listened to by others."

"One great satisfaction must be wanting to those who have been blessed with uninterrupted happiness, the consciousness of that happiness arising from reflection upon it."