Great Throughts Treasury

"He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life."

"Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly."

"Here's the difference between our two Utopias... you're founding a republic of swords, I'm founding... I'd found a republic of minds."

"His brain was in one of those violent, yet frighteningly calm, states where reverie is so profound it swallows up reality. We no longer see the objects before us, but we see, as if outside of ourselves, the forms we have in our minds."

"His judgment demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own."

"History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal: to depict eternal man beneath momentary man."

"History is night. That which is no longer on the stage immediately fades into obscurity. The scene is shifted, and all is forgotten."

"Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art — the finest of all, perhaps — truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal."

"Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow."

"Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man."

"How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said."

"Human intelligence discovered a way of perpetuating itself, one not only more durable and more resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier."

"I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!"

"I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores."

"I believe that the future contains events of an unfailing, calculable, necessary kind, which destiny would bring to pass of itself; but it is sometimes good that the hand of man should aid the force of things a little. Providence is generally slow-footed. One can hasten its steps."

"I do not know any aim more elevated, more holy, than that of seeking the abolition of capital punishment."

"I do not mind the dagger-thrusts of my enemies; but the pin-pricks of a friend I feel."

"I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren, and hear them cry without being tortured himself."

"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."

"I feel within me the future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brisker. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens. The sun's rays bathe my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but the heavens illuminate me with the reflection of-of worlds unknown. Some say the soul results merely from bodily powers. Why, then, does my soul become brighter when my bodily powers begin to waste away? Winter is above me, but eternal spring is within my heart. I inhale even now the fragrance of lilacs, violets, and roses, just as I did when I was twenty. The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these have I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, I have finished my day's work. But I cannot say, I have finished my life. My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn."

"I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

"I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one."

"I hate your ideas, but I would have myself killed so that you could have the right to expres them."

"I have no faith in the science of stupid men of learning."

"I have only one of everything: God, king, soul, boot."

"I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself."

"I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, - and the stars through his soul."

"I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill."

"I pass by them, and better than they."

"I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary."

"I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party Revolution-Civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World."

"I say that Humanity has a synonym — Equality; and that under heaven there is but one thing we ought to bow to — Genius; and only one thing before which we ought to kneel — Goodness."

"I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality."

"I was always a lover of soft-winged things."

"I will be Chateaubriand or nothing."

"I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one."

"Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river."

"Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions."

"Idolatry is centripetal force; nihilism is centrifugal force. The equilibrium of these two forces is philosophy."

"If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question."

"If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."

"If Caesar had given me Glory and war, and if I must abandon the love of my mother, I would say to great Caesar: Take your scepter and chariot. I love my mother more, alas! I love my mother more."

"If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered."

"If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!"

"If it were (Is it not) outrageous that society should treat with such rigid precision those of its members who were most poorly endowed in the distribution or wealth that chance had made, and who were, therefore, most worthy of indulgence."

"If no one loved, the sun would go out"

"If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights."

"If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness."

"If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother."

"I'm religiously opposed to religion"