Great Throughts Treasury

"Humor is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what they may, has only half a mind; an eye for what is above him, not for what is about him or below him. Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such total deficiency as Friedrich Schiller. In his whole writings there is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that way. His nature was without Humor; and he had too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren mockery, which, in the hundred cases are all that we find passing current as Humor, discover themselves in Schiller. His works are full of labored earnestness; he is the gravest of all writers."

"I call the Book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen."

"I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself."

"Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius."

"I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

"I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last."

"I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil."

"I have always found that the honest truth of our own mind has a certain attraction for every other mind that loves truth honestly."

"I don't like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it."

"I have seen gleams in the face and eyes of the man that have let you look into a higher country."

"I don't pretend to understand the Universe -- it's a great deal bigger than I am."

"I shall be an autocrat: that's my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's his."

"I have my own four walls."

"I want to meet my God awake."

"I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,--what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it."

"I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic."

"If a book come from the heart it will contrive to reach other hearts.-All art and authorcraft are of small account to that."

"If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?"

"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it."

"If that is not God, said Mirabeau, as the sun shone into his death-chamber, it is at least his cousin-german."

"If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it that he himself is aware of."

"If the cut of the costume indicates intellect and talent, then the color indicates temper and heart."

"If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown."

"If those gentlemen would let me alone I should be much obliged to them. I would say, as Shakespeare would say... Sweet Friend, for Jesus sake forbear."

"If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space."

"If they could forget for a moment the correggiosity of Correggio and the learned babble of the sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer."

"If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded."

"If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt."

"If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music."

"Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding."

"Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere."

"In a certain sense all men are historians."

"If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else."

"Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy!"

"In our wide world there is but one altogether fatal personage, the dunce,--he that speaks irrationally, that sees not, and yet thinks he sees."

"In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth,"

"In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great Men--genuine admiration, loyalty, adora-tion."

"In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment."

"In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government."

"In the end, everything is a gag."

"In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him."

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the miraculous by simple repetition ceases to be miraculous."

"In the true literary man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness; he is the light of the world; the world's priest--guiding it, like a sacred pillar of fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of time."

"In the huge mass of evil as it rolls and swells, there is ever some good working toward deliverance and triumph."

"Is not every meanest day the confluence of two eternities?"

"Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course."

"Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie."

"It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us."

"Is not light grander than fire?"

"It can be said of him, when he departed he took a Man’s life with him. No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of Time."