Great Throughts Treasury

"Better too much form than too little."

"Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary."

"Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended."

"Children are the to-morrow of society."

"Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil."

"Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter. [Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law, is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter from transgression.]"

"Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all."

"Fancy, when once brought into religion, knows not where to stop. It is like one of those fiends in old stories which any one could raise, but which, when raised, could never be kept within the magic circle."

"Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars; just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country."

"Falsehood, like the dry rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded."

"Happiness is no laughing matter"

"Good manners are a part of good morals."

"Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them elegant animals would be absurd."

"Half the truth will very often amount to absolute falsehood."

"Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar."

"Habits are formed, not at one stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that, unless vigilant care be employed, a great change may come over the character without our being conscious of any."

"It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke."

"It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection."

"It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness."

"It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits."

"If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed."

"I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked"

"He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion."

"In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us."

"It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly."

"It is never worthwhile to suggest doubts in order to show how cleverly we can answer them."

"It is observed by Homer that a man loses half his virtue the day he becomes a slave; he might have added, with truth, that he is likely to lose more than half when he becomes a slave-master."

"It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth."

"It is seldom that a man labors well in his minor department unless he over-rates it."

"It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary."

"It may be said, almost without qualification, that the wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter it is deceptive."

"It is folly to shiver over last year's snow."

"It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do."

"It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees."

"Joy is not in things; it is in us."

"Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it."

"Man is naturally more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience--more desirous of security than of safety."

"Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of."

"Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man"

"Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one."

"Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance."

"Misgive, that you may not mistake."

"It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others."

"Most precepts that are given are so general that they cannot be applied, except by an exercise of as much discretion as would be sufficient to frame them."

"Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument."

"Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived."

"Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object."

"One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business."

"Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices."

"Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; but it is cruel because it is wrong."