Great Throughts Treasury

"A wise man neither lets himself be governed, nor seeks to govern others; he wishes that reason should govern alone and always."

"At the beginning of love and at its end the lovers are embarrassed to be left alone."

"Avoid law suits beyond all things; they influence your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property."

"Between good sense and good taste there is the same difference as between cause and effect."

"Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future."

"Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us; they rejoice in the present."

"Death never happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives."

"Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding."

"Disgrace kills hatred and jealousy. Once someone is no longer a favorite and no longer envied... he might even be a hero and not annoy us."

"Eminent stations make great men more great, and little ones less."

"He is rich whose income is more than his expenses; and he is poor whose expenses exceed his income."

"How little does a smile cost!"

"However fastidious we may be in love, we forgive more faults in love than in friendship."

"If it be true that a man is rich who wants nothing, a wise man is a very rich man."

"If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them."

"If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us, which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it; so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension."

"If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the great cities! The necessaries of life do not occasion at most a third part of the hurry."

"In the world there are only two ways of raising one’s self, either by one’s own industry or by the weakness of others."

"It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent."

"It is worse to apprehend than to suffer."

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

"Logic is the art of making truth prevail."

"Man does not live long enough to profit from his faults."

"Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses."

"The genius of conversation consists much less in showing a great deal of it, than in causing it to be discovered in others."

"The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you."

"The most delicate, the most sensible, of all pleasures consists in promoting the pleasure of others."

"The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love."

"The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence."

"The young can bear solitude better than the old, for their passions occupy their thoughts."

"There are but three events which concern men: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live."

"There are but two ways of rising in the world: either by one’s own industry or profiting by the foolishness of others."

"There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others."

"There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads on the heels of great and unexpected riches."

"There is nothing of which we are so fond and with which we are so careless as life."

"Those who, without knowing us, think or speak evil of us, do no harm; it is not us they attack, but the phantom of their own imagination."

"Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love."

"To endeavor to forget any one is the certain way to think of nothing else."

"We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect."

"We hope to grow old, yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die."

"We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all."

"Woman grow attached to men through the favors they grant them; but men, through the same favors, are cured of their love."

"Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal cannot imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently."

"The same vices that are gross and insupportable in others we do not notice in ourselves."

"A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others. "

"A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less. "

"A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself. "

"All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone. "

"All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone. "

"Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates. "