Great Throughts Treasury

"Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath - tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the moment."

"Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope."

"General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it."

"Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements."

"Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others."

"Fame is not popularity. It is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men."

"Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use."

"Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity."

"Gracefulness had been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul."

"He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery."

"Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts."

"If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory."

"Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope, and few are reduced so low as that."

"It is better to desire than to enjoy - to love than to be loved."

"Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instructive tendencies of the human frame."

"Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves."

"Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves."

"Learning is its own exceedingly great reward."

"Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot."

"It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures."

"Love and joy are twins, or born of each other."

"Lying is like trying to hide in a fog. If you move about you are in danger of bumping your head against the truth. And as soon as the fog blows away you are gone anyhow."

"Malice often takes the garb of truth."

"Man is a make-believe animal - he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

"No really great man every thought himself so."

"Natural affection is a prejudice: for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others."

"Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable."

"No man believes he shall ever die."

"People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking."

"Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter."

"Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern - why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to be alive a hundred years ago, why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I shall not be here in a hundred years hence.?"

"Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after."

"Political truth is a libel - religious truth blasphemy."

"Some degree of affection is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all."

"Sometimes almost more important than sexual love or money to live on is, I think, somebody who can accompany you in your mind's experiences."

"The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard."

"That which any one has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportionate eagerness and haste."

"The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come."

"The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong if we do not feel right."

"The garb of religion is the best cloak for power."

"The greatest talents do not generally attain the highest stations; for, though high, the ascent to them is narrow, beaten, and crooked."

"The art of pleasing consists in being pleased. To be amiable is to be satisfied with one's self and others."

"The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up."

"The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance: they treat everything with contempt, which they do not understand."

"The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have."

"The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in their own esteem but by lowering their neighbors."

"The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind."

"The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men."

"The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition."