Great Throughts Treasury

"Every star has its own orbit; and between it and its nearest neighbor there is not only a powerful attraction but an infinite distance. When the attraction becomes stronger than the distance the two do not embrace: they crash together in ruin."

"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does."

"Everything is possible: everything. Listen. I am old. I am the old serpent, older than Adam, older than Eve. I remember Lilith, who came before Adam and Eve. I was her darling as I am yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other."

"Everybody has choices, Mother. The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between rag-picking and flower-selling, according to her taste. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

"Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on."

"Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn."

"Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious."

"Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare."

"Fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles."

"Finally, since I have given you all this advice, I add this crowning precept, the most valuable of all. NEVER TAKE ANYBODY'S ADVICE."

"Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself thinking once or twice a week."

"First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it."

"For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end will come."

"Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature."

"Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty."

"From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way."

"Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness."

"General consultant to mankind."

"Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing."

"Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with."

"Get married, but never to a man who is home all day."

"Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people, and what do you always find? That the stables are the real center of the household."

"Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not."

"Great Britain and the United States are nations separated by a common language."

"Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness."

"Gin was mother's milk to her."

"Get out of my way; for I won't stop for you."

"Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, Is there a play from Shaw this morning? and when she says, No, he will say, Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish. And that's your chance, my boy."

"Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort."

"God is on the side of the big battalions."

"Golf is typical capitalist lunacy."

"God help England if she had no Scots to think for her!"

"Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone by stone, a palace."

"Happiness and beauty are byproducts. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty."

"He didn't dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life."

"Hate is the coward who bullied retaliation."

"Hamlet's experience simply could not have happened to a plumber."

"He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh degree of concentration?"

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."

"Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought."

"He [the Briton] is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

"He ain't a copper just look at 'is boots!"

"He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."

"Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside."

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."

"He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it."

"He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it."

"Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation"

"Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?"