Great Throughts Treasury

"Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail."

"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery."

"Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth."

"The literature of the world has exerted its power by being translated."

"I have always had the greatest respect for students. There is nothing I hate more than condescension—the attitude that they are inferior to you. I always assume they have good minds."

"There are two statements about human beings that are true: that all human beings are alike, and that all are different. On those two facts all human wisdom is founded."

"There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who an do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can… give all our attention to the opportunity before us."

"To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in."

"A classic is a book that remains in print."

"An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure."

"Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king."

"For Tolstoy? anything that human beings do has its glory? I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened."

"Great periods of poetry begin with an inordinate self-consciousness, and only gradually attain to the natural."

"I love the fall. I love it because of the smells that you speak of; and also because things are dying, things that you don't have to take care of anymore, and the grass stops growing."

"If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you."

"It is astonishing how few stories have been told perfectly."

"Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better."

"Nothing stays not even change, that can grow tired of its own name; the very thought too much for it. Somewhere in air a stillness is, so far, so thin-But let it alone. Whoever we are it is not for us."

"Our best chance for happiness is education."

"Respect for the Truth is an acquired taste."

"The art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed."

"The connectedness of things is what the educator contemplates to the limit of his capacity. No human capacity is great enough to permit a vision of the world as simple, but if the educator does not aim at the vision no one else will, and the consequences are dire when no one does."

"The first thing to do about a problem is to recognize it; the second thing is to state it; the third thing is to solve it."

"The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do."

"There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion."

"It?s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don?t know of any first-rate artist who hasn?t manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better."

"Memory performs the impossible for man; holds together past and present, gives continuity and dignity to human life."

"There is one thing we can do, and the happiest of people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present."

"To fail to love is not to exist at all."

"Weightless in water, swift as the wind, Subtle of purpose - a feather blown - I go with my oarsmen where they will, my beautiful body and theirs all one."

"When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all."

"Wit is the only wall between us and the dark."