Great Throughts Treasury

"For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love."

"He who rules must humor full as much as he commands."

"In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations."

"People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate."

"She took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that men would be so, and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks."

"A bit o' bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's stomachs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know, God help 'em."

"A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories."

"A book which hath been culled from the flowers of all books."

"A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their solitary moments with hastily-snatched caresses, are prepared for their future life together as the novice is prepared for the cloister—by experiencing its utmost contrast."

"A child, more than all other gifts that earth can offer to declining man, brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."

"A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run."

"A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest."

"A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen."

"A foreman, if he's got a conscience, and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it."

"A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."

"A girl of eighteen imagines the feelings behind the face that has moved her with its sympathetic youth as easily as primitive people imagined the humors of the gods in fair weather. What is she to believe in if not in this vision woven from within?"

"A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful hole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved."

"A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead."

"A kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition."

"A light divine and searching on the earth, compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, yet clings with loving check, and shines anew, reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp our angel Reason holds. We had not walked but for Tradition; we walk evermore to higher paths by brightening Reason's lamp."

"A maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it."

"A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."

"A man carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."

"A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping."

"A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain to feel much anger."

"A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones."

"A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow."

"A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow."

"A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink . . ."

"A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily comes to persuade himself that no other woman would have suited him so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarreling without any sense of alienation."

"A man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass."

"A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them."

"A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought."

"A mother's yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man."

"A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side."

"A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel."

"A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions."

"A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming."

"A serious ape whom none take seriously, obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts by hard buffoonery."

"A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes."

"A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult."

"A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other."

"A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace."

"A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards."

"A woman mixed of such fine elements"

"A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe."

"A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them."

"A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts."

"A woman's rank lies in the fullness of her womanhood: therein alone she is royal."

"Abroad, that large home of ruined reputations."