Great Throughts Treasury

"Calumny confounds a wised man and destroys the oak of his heart."

"Have something to do, so that the devil will always find you occupied."

"Let us learn upon earth those things which can call us to heaven."

"Love can do all things."

"Make a virtue of necessity."

"Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face."

"No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure."

"When you think to excuse, you accuse."

"A fat paunch never breeds fine thoughts."

"A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept."

"An unstable pilot steers a leaking ship, and the blind is leading the blind straight to the pit. The ruler is like the ruled."

"Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you."

"Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied."

"Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most."

"Begin now to be what you will be hereafter."

"Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless."

"Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law."

"Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield."

"Catch, then, O catch the transient hour; improve each moment as it flies!"

"Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, 'Why do you not practice what you preach?'"

"Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'til your good is better and your better is best."

"Haste is of the Devil."

"Having experienced the vexation of marriage, why should she be like the dog who returns to his own vomit,"

"It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance."

"Keep doing some kind of work that the devil may always find you employed."

"Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life."

"Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price."

"Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night."

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth!"

"No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow."

"Prayer is a groan."

"Preferring to store her money in the stomachs of the needy rather than hide it in a purse."

"Quick enough, if good enough."

"The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart."

"The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be."

"The friendship that can cease has never been real."

"The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end."

"The scars of others should teach us caution."

"They talk like angels but they live like men."

"To saints their very slumber is a prayer."

"True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks."

"Virginity can be lost by a thought."

"What good is speed if the brain has oozed out on the way."

"When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting."

"Why do you not practice what you preach."