Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud."

"It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important."

"It is the province of art to paint as plastic nature--if there is such a thing--intended her original design, without the defects which the unmanageable materials render inevitable, and free from the ravages which result from a conflict with time."

"It's easier to swoon in pious dreams Than do good actions."

"Joy makes us giddy, dizzy."

"Know this, that every country can produce good men."

"Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever."

"Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy."

"Man — who is he? Too bad to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!"

"Mocking laughter from Hell."

"Nature intended that woman should be her masterpiece."

"Nature meant woman to be her masterpiece."

"No, you have been always docile. See now, a forehead vaulted thus, or thus - a nose bow'd one way rather than another - eye-brows with straighter, or with sharper curve - a line, a mole, a wrinkle, a mere nothing I' th' countenance of an European savage - and thou—art saved, in Asia, from the fire. Ask ye for signs and wonders after that? What need of calling angels into play?"

"Nothing under the sun is accidental, least of all that of which the intention is so clearly evident."

"O with that fruit go cautiously to work. Too much of it is hurtful, sours the humor, makes the blood melancholy."

"One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough"

"One incautious step often leads to mischief."

"One's own most bearable."

"Pearls mean tears."

"Precisely the way on which the species reaches its perfection, every individual human being (one earlier, one later) must have traversed, too."

"Pride, rank pride! The iron pot would with a silver prong be lifted from the furnace—to imagine itself a silver vase."

"Resist as much as thou wilt; heaven's ways are heaven's ways."

"Struggle against it as thou wilt, yet Heaven's ways are Heaven's ways."

"Suspicion follows close on mistrust."

"Terror still vibrates in her every nerve. Her fancy mingles fire with all she thinks of. Asleep, her soul seems busy; but awake, absent: now less than brute, now more than angel."

"That all a beggar's wants are only known to a beggar: such alone can tell how to relieve them usefully and wisely."

"That is, this portion of the human race was come so far in the exercise of its reason, as to need, and to be able to make use of nobler and worthier motives of moral action than temporal rewards and punishments, which had hitherto been its guides."

"That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the Race. Education is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race."

"The Child of Education begins with slow yet sure footsteps; it is late in overtaking many a more happily organized child of nature; but it does overtake it; and thenceforth can never be distanced by it again."

"The child, sent abroad, saw other children who knew more, who lived more becomingly, and asked itself, in confusion, "Why do I not know that too? Why do I not live so too? Ought I not to have been taught and admonished of all this in my father's house?""

"The denial of an individual, had it even been a Solomon, did not arrest the progress of the general reason, and was even in itself a proof that the nation had now come a great step nearer the truth. For individuals only deny what the many are bringing into consideration; and to bring into consideration that, concerning which no one troubled himself at all before, is half way to knowledge."

"The eye of Paul Pry often finds more than he wished to find."

"The gift of prayer is not always at our command."

"The greatest of all is this that true and real wonders should happen so perpetually, so daily. Without this universal miracle a thinking man had scarcely called those such, which only children, Recha, ought to name so, who love to gape and stare at the unusual and hunt for novelty."

"The lion is ashamed, it's true, when he hunts with the fox."

"The man who can wholly resign himself to the impressions which innocence and beauty make upon him is, in my opinion, rather to be envied than derided."

"The miracles which He performed for the Jews, the prophecies which He caused to be recorded through them, were surely not for the few mortal Jews, in whose time they had happened and been recorded: He had His intentions therein in reference to the whole Jewish people, to the entire Human Race, which, perhaps, is destined to remain on earth forever, though every individual Jew and every individual man die forever."

"The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank man, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness; one who loves life, and understands the use of it; obliging alike at all hours; above all, of a golden temper and steadfast as an anchor. For such an one we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker."

"The real beggar is indeed the true and only king."

"The search for truth is more precious than its possession."

"The searcher's eye not seldom finds more than he wished to find."

"The true vagrant is the only king above all comparison."

"The worst of superstitions is to think one's own most bearable."

"The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable."

"Thou art mine, too cheap at any price. Oh, thou enchanting work of art! Do I then possess thee? But who shall possess thyself, thou still more beautiful masterpiece of nature?"

"Tis a long hundred leagues to Babylon; and to get in one's debts is no employment, that speeds a traveler."

"To look forward to pleasure is also a pleasure."

"To whom his God (I think I still retain thy own expression used concerning him) to whom, of all the good things of this world, his God in full abundance has bestowed the greatest and the least."

"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel."

"We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod."