Great Throughts Treasury

"An ounce of wit is worth a pound of argument."

"As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry, while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too."

"As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen."

"Avoid shame but do not seek glory --nothing so expensive as glory."

"Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing"

"Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737."

"Brevity to writing is what charity is to all other virtues; righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other."

"But now persecution is good, because it exists; every law which originated in ignorance and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors: when such laws are repealed, they will be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and caution."

"Children are excellent physiognomists, and soon discover their real friends. - Luttrell calls them all lunatics, and so in fact they are. - What is childhood but a series of happy delusions?"

"Conquest has explored more than ever curiosity has done; and the path for science has been commonly opened by the sword."

"Contempt is commonly taken by the young for an evidence of understanding; but it is neither difficult to acquire, nor meritorious when acquired. To discover the imperfections of others is penetration; to hate them for their faults is contempt. We may be clear­sighted without being malevolent, and make use of the errors we discover, to learn caution, not to gratify satire."

"Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up."

"Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers."

"Dean Swift's rule is as good for women as for men — never to talk above a half minute without pausing, and giving others an opportunity to strike in."

"Dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes from the disgust excited by false humanity, canting hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm."

"Do not assume that because I am frivolous I am shallow; I don't assume that because you are grave you are profound."

"Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty."

"Doctors said I'm going to have this all my life probably."

"Don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts; you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures"

"Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd."

"Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application."

"Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time."

"For God’s sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself."

"Genuine and innocent wit is surely the flavor of the mind. Man could not direct his way by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl."

"Good friends are good for your health."

"Granted there are instances in which children have been reared in an atmosphere of inconsistency where value training of any kind was entirely missing; but even in these cases, it is the lack of loving guidance and structure rather than the lack of punitive retribution that has triggered the behavioral manifestations of delinquency. In a high percentage of court cases, there is evidence that the child has met with punishment that has not only been frequent but in many cases excessive. In fact, one of the sources of the child's own inadequate development is the model of open violence provided by the parent who has resorted repeatedly to corporal punishment, usually because of his own limited imagination. This indoctrination into a world where only might makes right and where all strength is invested in the authority of the mother or of the father not only makes it easy for the child to develop aggressive patterns of behavior but makes him emotionally distant and distrustful."

"Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time."

"He [Macaulay] has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful."

"He deserves to be preached to death by wild curates."

"He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful."

"He has returned from Italy a greater bore than ever; he bores on architecture, painting, statuary and music."

"He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again."

"He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop."

"He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library."

"Heat, ma'am! I said; it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."

"Heaven never helps the men who will not act."

"His enemies might have said before that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful."

"Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that joy will come; desire is the wish it may come."

"How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is, I will see you in the vestry after service."

"How nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects; the ill-nature of the wasp, the sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug!"

"Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face."

"I always fear that creation will expire before teatime."

"I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive."

"I have asked several men what passes in their minds when they are thinking, and I could never find any man who could think for two minutes together. Everybody has seemed to admit that it was a perpetual deviation from a particular path, and a perpetual return to it; which, imperfect as the operation is, is the only method in which we can operate with our minds to carry on any process of thought."

"I have come to the conclusion that mankind consume twice too much food. According to my computation, I have eaten and drunk, between my tenth and seventieth year, forty-four horse-wagon loads more than was good for me."

"I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well."

"I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave."

"I have the most perfect confidence in your indiscretion."

"I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury."

"I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland."