Great Throughts Treasury

"Whatever the number of a man’s friends, there will be times in his life when he has one too few."

"Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost cannot get again, and, if you cannot contrive to do without it, you had better never have been born."

"When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how calm one can be."

"When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania, when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank, oh, then diet yourself well on biography - the biography of good and great men."

"Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth."

"Will our souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream?"

"A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool. "

"A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. "

"Ah, what without a heaven would be even love! A perpetual terror of the separation that must one day come. "

"Ambition has not rest! "

"And whatever you lend, let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name, once lost you cannot get again, and, if you can contrive to do without it, you had better never have been born."

"Arm thyself for the truth! "

"Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors."

"Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes not victories without it. "

"Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius. "

"He never errs who sacrifices self. "

"He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future. "

"If there is a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness. "

"In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog’s faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner. "

"It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one but themselves."

"It is not the deed - it is the will. "

"It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring."

"Life is short - while we speak it flies; enjoy, then, the present, and forget the future; such is the moral of ancient poetry, a graceful and a wise moral - indulged beneath a southern sky, and all deserving the phrase applied to it, “The philosophy of the garden.”"

"Love is rarely a hypocrite; but hate - how detect and how guard against it! It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties, whilst it favors its disguise."

"Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man’s natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him."

"Man must be disappointed with the lesser things in life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater. "

"Men are valued, not for what they are, but for what they seem to be. "

"Nobody loves heartily unless people take pains to prevent it. "

"Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man."

"Of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophers seeks rather to solve than to deny. "

"Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes."

"Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence. "

"Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul. "

"Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue. "

"No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy."

"Nothing conveys a more inaccurate idea of a whole truth than a part of a truth so prominently brought forth as to throw the other parts into shadow. This is the art of caricature."

"Of all the agonies in life, that which is most poignant and harrowing; that which for the time annihilates reason, and leave our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart, is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love."

"Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to which the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tars are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer - Pharisees parade prayers, impostors parade tears."

"Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many; hopes and the non-realization of many fears. "

"Strive, while improving your one talent, to enrich your whole capital as a man. It is in this way that you escape from the wretched narrow-mindedness which is the characteristic of every one who cultivates his specialty alone. "

"The bliss that can be told is but half-bliss. "

"The curse of the great is ennui. "

"The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success. "

"To be happy you must forget yourself. Learn benevolence; it is the only cure of a morbid temper. "

"There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed. "

"There is an ill-breeding to which, whatever our rank and nature, we are almost equally sensitive, the ill-breeding that comes from want of consideration for others. "

"When people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one."

"To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart. "

"When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching. "

"Toil to some is happiness, and rest to others. This man can only breathe in crowds, and that man only in solitudes."