Great Throughts Treasury

"The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying."

"The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

"The house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been at work."

"The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."

"The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously."

"The human race, in all its poverty, has only one truly effective weapon- laughter. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand."

"The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion."

"The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic and the witty upon the matter."

"The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it."

"The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind - as long as it's day-time and you're not behind him."

"The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way."

"The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires."

"The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be brothers; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together--whites, niggers, Jews, everybody--there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!"

"The irresistable desire to be irresistibly desired."

"The Jabalites... They worship no god; and if we in goodness of heart do send a missionary to show them the way of life, they listen with respect to all he hath to say, and then they eat him. This doth tend to hinder the spread of light."

"The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare ? in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of assaults and drunk and disorderlies his name seldom appears."

"The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large."

"The kernel, the soul ? let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances ? is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing."

"The king he allowed he would drop over to t' other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way - meaning the devil, I reckon."

"The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate."

"The lack of money is the root of all evil."

"The ladder of life is full of splinters, but they always prick the hardest when we're sliding down."

"The late Bill Nye once said I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction, is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. During twentythree days in every month (in the absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also, she wants that candle -- yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart."

"The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands"

"The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it."

"The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal."

"The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms."

"The main difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives."

"The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way."

"The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little."

"The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf."

"The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful."

"The man who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."

"The man with a new idea is a crank -- until the idea succeeds."

"The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise."

"The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only - not from its privileged classes."

"The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave."

"The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod ? and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving."

"The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon."

"The mock King's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point, just as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of the second rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him. A sickening consternation struck through him; he recognized his mother! and up flew his hand, palm outward, before his eyes?that old involuntary gesture, born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an instant more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was at his side. She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she cried, O my child, my darling! lifting toward him a face that was transfigured with joy and love. The same instant an officer of the King's Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. The words I do not know you, woman! were falling from Tom Canty's lips when this piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted, that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were stricken valueless: they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags."

"The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it--when unpopular."

"The more I know about people, the better I like my dog."

"The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become."

"The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it."

"The most difficult We do not deal in facts when we are contemplating ourselves."

"The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."

"The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which."

"The new political gospel: Public office is private graft."

"The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny."