Great Throughts Treasury

"There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin

"This is the essential evil of vice; it debases a man." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin

"Whatever touches the nerves of motive, whatever shifts man’s moral position, is mightier than steam or caloric or lightning." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin

"He that is one man's slave is free from none." -

"Be grateful to the man who cares nothing for your remorse. You are his equal." - René Char

"Let us pity the wicked man; for it is very sad to seek happiness where it does not exist. Let our compassion express itself in efforts to bring him gently back to sacred principle, and if he persist, let us pity him the more for a blindness so fatal to himself." - François Ignace Dunod De Charnage

"Mutability is the a badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike." - Pierre Charron

"The true science and study of man is man." - Pierre Charron

"There is no greater joy for a wise man than the joy of improving his character traits." - Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

"If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"Every man is the painter and the sculptor of his own life." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"It is a shame for a man to desire honor because of his noble progenitors, and not to deserve it by his own virtue." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour." -

"Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man; it effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more directly than any other against whom it is directed." - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, aka Lord Clarendon

"No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do not hurt." - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, aka Lord Clarendon

"It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants." - William Cobbett

"Man is honored for his wisdom, loved for his kindness." - Shalom Cohen

"Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his existence?" - Frank Moore Colby

"The wise man loves to believe nothing; the simple man to believe all things. The latter is credulous to others, the former to himself." - W. G. Cole

"By reading a man does, as it we, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages." - Jeremy Collier

"There is no truer and more abiding happiness than the knowledge that one is free to go on doing, day by day, the best work one can do, in the kind one likes best, and that this work is absorbed by a steady market, and thus supports one's own life. Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do." -

"Until a man has expressed his emotion, he does not yet know what emotion it is. The act of expressing it is therefore an exploration of his own emotions. He is trying to find out what these emotions are." -

"A man's best friends are his ten fingers." - Robert Collyer

"You read of but one wise man; and all that he knew was - that he knew nothing." - William Congreve

"The man who is master of his passions is Reason's slave." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

"No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"What a noble gift to man are the forests! What a debt of gratitude and admiration we owe to their beauty and their utility! How pleasantly the shadows of the wood fall upon our heads when we turn from the glitter and turmoil of the world of man!" - Susan Fenimore Cooper, fully Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper

"To get the best out of a man, go to what is best in him." - Tim Considine, fully Timothy Daniel "Tim" Considine

"What destroys one man preserves another." - Pierre Cornielle

"A moral, sensible and well-bred man will not affront me, and no other can." - William Cowper

"I venerate the man whose heart is warm, whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, coincident, exhibit lucid proof that he is honest in the sacred cause." - William Cowper

"No man was ever scolded out of his sins." - William Cowper

"Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power." -

"Man yields to custom as he bows to fate - in all things, ruled, mind, body, and estate." - George Crabbe

"To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant." - Frederick Evan Crane

"No man is free who is not master of his soul and controller of his spirit." - Thomas Crombie

"I do not mean to expose my ideas to ingenious ridicule by maintaining that everything happens to every man for the best; but I will contend, that he who makes the best use of it, fulfills the part of a wise and good man." -

"In short, the actions of man are never free; they are always the necessary consequences of his temperament, of the received ideas, and of the notions, either true or false, which he has formed to himself of happiness." -

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

"If a pickpocket meets a Holy Man, he will see only his pockets." -

"The simple virtues of willingness, readiness, alertness and courtesy will carry a man further than mere smartness." - Sara Davidson

"If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow creatures, let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself." - Robertson Davies

"The simple virtues of willingness, readiness, alertness and courtesy will carry a young man farther than mere smartness." - Henry Pomeroy Davison

"How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really consider a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affection is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself." - George Dawson

"Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself." - Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

"The man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities." - Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

"As a man is, so is his company." - Arthur Dent