Great Throughts Treasury

"No, do not belittle trash. Is it the perfect hors d?oeuvre for a good book. It whets the literary appetite, or, at least, it ought to do so."

"No human being believes that any other human being has a right to be in bed when he himself is up."

"Surely it is better to tell the truth behind people's backs than never to tell it at all."

"One does not need to be an economist to wonder how it comes that a country which can bear almost any financial burden for great ends during war time would be ruined if it shouldered the financial burden necessary to the accomplishment of equally great ends during peace time."

"That is why I think that a dart-board, instead of encouraging heavy drinking, is likely to lessen it, and why I believe that a dart-board should be part of the amenities of every civilised public-house."

"The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about."

"The British Lion?s one ambition has always been to be a domestic poet."

"The days on which one has been the most inquisitive are among the days on which one has been happiest."

"The chief objection to growing old is not that one grows old oneself, but that the world grows older, and it is not so much that the world grows older as that the world we once knew is in ruins."

"The English are patient people. If they were not they would not have so many bad hotels."

"The great pleasure of ignorance is the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen."

"The discovery of new notes of sympathy is the secret of all good conversation."

"The great ages of prose are the ages in which men shave. The great ages of poetry are those in which they allow their beards to grow."

"The habit of courtesy, when once acquired, is almost impossible to get rid of."

"The life of a reviewer may be a hard one, if he reads as thoroughly as he ought to read and writes as gracefully as he ought to write, but, if you don?t mind not being rich, it is full of satisfying pleasures?the pleasure, especially, of acquaintance not only with books but with the extraordinarily interesting people who write the best of them."

"The last man in the world whose opinion I would take on what to eat would be a doctor. It is far safer to consult a waiter, and not a bit more expensive."

"The lowbrow often believes that a bad book is good, while the highbrow often believes that a good book is bad."

"The incredible has become the credible now that we see little children going about carrying gasmasks. That is one of the achievements of Herr Hitler. He will be remembered in history, I think, as the first terrorist who compelled children to carry gasmasks. They are a symbol of the condition to which he has reduced the civilized world."

"The most popular of the vices at the present moment seems to me to be intolerance."

"The ordinary man takes very little interest in public affairs until they interfere with his private affairs."

"The rich never feel so good as when they are speaking of their possessions as responsibilities."

"The sense of one?s ignorance is a much more useful thing than the sense of one?s knowledge."

"The shy man usually finds that he has been shy without a cause, and that, in practice, no one takes the slightest notice of him."

"THE truth is, our clothes make us to a great extent what we are."

"The truth is, he [Chesterton] never ceased to be a poet even when he was writing prose. How fine a poet he was at his best everyone who has read the Ballad of the White Horse knows. Some of his verse might be described as a riot of rhetoric, but the rhetoric is the genuine expression of a riotous and exuberant imagination. The novels, too, were riots ? some of them glorious riots, with little imps of nonsense tumbling head-over-heels among apocalyptic visions. There are writers who hold that Chesterton squandered his genius and endangered his literary immortality by his indifference to form. He was certainly of a squandering temperament, but in his case it was not a common spendthrift but a millionaire who did the squandering. He once said that if he were a millionaire he would like just to chuck his money about ? not to deserving people, but to just chuck it about. In literature and journalism he may be said to have chucked his genius about. It seems to me likely that we shall still for many generations to come be collecting the gold pieces that he has strewn with such magnificent recklessness."

"There are finer things in life than playing games, but, if there were no games to play, would more people do finer things? I doubt it. They would probably only do something worse."

"There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things."

"There are some people who want to throw their arms round you just because it's Christmas, there are other people who want to strangle you just because it?s Christmas."

"The wise man learns to beware of becoming the victim of the facts that are staring at him in the face."

"There is a taint about money earned by honest work. By the time one has earned enough of it one has got into such a habit of work that one does not know how to idle."

"There are only two sure means of forgetfulness known to a man ? work and drink ? and, of the two, work is the more economical."

"There has never been a satisfactory definition of what constitutes a gentleman. I have been called a gentleman myself."

"There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before."

"There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evil-doer."

"There is more love-poetry in a page of Browning than in all the verse Whitman ever wrote."

"Too many Nelsons would spoil a navy, and one blind eye is enough for a fleet."

"There must be a mild pleasure in irritating other people by going about the world with a sweet and sickly and intolerable smile. But I doubt whether the smilers are happier than the scowlers. There is a fierce delight to get from scowling."

"Virtue may seem as sleepy as a cat, but she is dangerous when she sleeps."

"We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, and a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer."

"Yet, though no longer a practicing vegetarian, I still have a kind of vegetarian faith?a belief that lettuce is somehow a purer thing than a pig, and a dish of broad beans fitter food for a philosopher than the offals of the butcher?s shop. There is something noble in the character of a man who can refuse turkey, and who is content with a mess of cauliflower, while all round him are enjoying saddle of mutton and red-currant jelly. Say what you will, that man has a soul above pleasures. He is king of himself, unassailable by temptation, the ascetic we should all like to be."

"Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive."

"Winter air is one of the things that can be still without being stagnant. As a matter of fact, the stiller it is the more it seems to tingle with life."