Great Throughts Treasury

"Distress is virtue’s opportunity: we only live to teach us how to die."

"Of the king’s creation you may be; but he who makes a count ne’er made a man."

"Ambition is our idol, on whose wings great minds are carry'd only to extreme; to be sublimely great, or to be nothing."

"An oath is a recognizance to heaven, binding us over in the courts above to plead to the indictment of our crimes."

"Pity is akin to love."

"Lying's a certain mark of cowardice."

"Pity's akin to love; and every thought of that soft kind is welcome to my soul."

"When guilt is in its blush of infancy, it trembles in a tenderness of shame; and the first eye that pierces through the veil that hides the secret brings it to the face."

"Words may be counterfeit, false coined, and current only from the tongue, without the mind; but passion is in the soul, and always speaks the heart."

"The fragrant infancy of opening flowers flowed to my senses in that melting kiss."

"'Tis something to be willing to commend; but my best praise is, that I am your friend."

"There is no courage but in innocence; no constancy but in an honest cause."

"The reconciling grave swallows distinction first, that made us foes; there all lie down in peace together."