Great Throughts Treasury

"To be intelligible is to be found out."

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability. "

"Those who have much are often greedy, those who have little always share."

"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up."

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity. "

"To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life."

"True friends stab you in the front. "

"To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. "

"Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. "

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing, as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. "

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."

"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow."

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"What a man really has is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance."

"When people agree I always feel that I must be wrong."

"When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck men risk theirs. "

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? "

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. "

"Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat."

"While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at. "

"Who, being loved, is poor? "

"Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious."

"Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood."

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves. By each let his be heard. Some do it with a bitter look. Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss. The brave man with a sword!"

"Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. "

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated. "

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. "

"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear. "