Great Throughts Treasury

"As we live, we are transmitters of life. And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us."

"Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror."

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself."

"Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved."

"Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don't sit down without one of the gods."

"Freedom is a very great reality. But it means, above all things, freedom from lies."

"I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts are the result of my dreams. It is very queer, but my dreams make conclusions for me. They decide things finally. I dream a decision. Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusion of my vague days and offer me them as dreams."

"Love is a thing to be learned. It is a difficult, complex maintenance of individual integrity throughout the incalculable processes of inter-human polarity."

"One realm we have never conquered - the pure present."

"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it."

"The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness."

"There is no point in work unless it absorbs you like an absorbing game."

"The living moment is everything."

"The more we search for an alibi, the more we discover that unhappiness on earth is man-made."

"What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another... Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom... The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences... the world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. It can't pigeon-hole a new experience."

"We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."

"Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling."

"I believe the souls of the dead in some way re-enter and pervade the souls of the living; so that life is always the life of the living creatures, and death is always our affair."

"Man is a moral animal. "

"The world doesn’t fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. But it can’t pigeonhole a real new experience. "

"What is alive, and open, and active, is good. All that makes for inertia, lifelessness, dreariness, is bad. This is the essence of morality."

"Whoever walks a mile full of false sympathy walks to the funeral of the whole human race."

"Truth myth concerns itself centrally with the onward adventure of the integral soul. "

"Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled… purpose. "

"The great virtue in life is real courage; it helps one to face facts and look beyond them. "

"The Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved. "

"The Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."

"The Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once again slaves. "

"The only rule is, do what you really, impulsively, wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have the courage of your own strong emotion. "

"The Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar."