Great Throughts Treasury

"There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"The solitude of the subject results from its relationship with the existing over which it is master. This mastery over existing is the power of beginning, of starting out from itself, starting out from itself neither to act nor to think, but to be." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"So the youngsters have a high level of physical activity throughout their school years. School groups often go on expeditions: itÂ’s common to see six-year-olds, with heavy backpacks, trudging along with older kids on hikes which Â… may last four or five days, and in quite forbidding country. As they move on into higher levels of school Â… much of the childrenÂ’s time is allotted to training in fishing and hunting and survival skills, at the expense of basic educational skills. They are forced to learn not only the basic techniques but also how to improvise ecologically acceptable equipment in the wild: hooks, snares, bows, arrows, and so on. Â… The experiences of the children are closely tied in with studies of plants, animals, and landscape." - Ernest Callenbach

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come in close to the beach. It was a safe and fine place to bathe in the day but it was no place to swim at night. At night the sharks came in close to the beach, hunting at the edge of the Stream, and from the upper porch of the house on quiet nights you could hear the splashing of the fish they hunted and if you went down to the beach you could see the phosphorescent wakes they made in the water. At night the sharks had no fear and everything else feared them. But in the day they stayed out away from the clear white sand and if they did come in you could see their shadows a long way away." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember." - Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

"Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"One enemy is too much for a man, and a hundred friends too few." - Italian Proverbs

"Revenge a hundred years old has still its milk-teeth." - Italian Proverbs