Great Throughts Treasury

"A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt and support them through great actions."

"Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are."

"Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little."

"Do you wish to find out a person's weak points? Note the failings he has the quickest eye for in others."

"Heroism is active genius; genius, contemplative heroism. Heroism is the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in action."

"Heroism is the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in action."

"How few are our real wants! and how easy it is to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable."

"It is much easier to think right without doing right, than to do right without thinking right. Just thoughts may, and often do, fail of producing just deeds; but just deeds are sure to get just thoughts. The clearest understanding can do little in purifying an impure heart, the strongest little in straightening a crooked one. You cannot reason or talk an Augean stable into cleanliness. A single day's work would make more progress in such a task than a century's words."

"Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us."

"Many a man’s vices have at first nothing worse than good qualities run wild."

"Many men spend their lives gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof."

"Mountains never shake hands. Their roots may touch; they may keep together some way up; but at length they part company, and rise into individual, insulated peaks. So is it with great men."

"Much of this world’s wisdom is still acquired by necromancy, by consulting the oracular dead."

"Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others. A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself. As to the pure all things are pure, even so to the impure all things are impure."

"Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine, of honor."

"Religion presents few difficulties to the humble; many to the proud; insuperable ones to the vain."

"Right is might, and ever was, and ever shall be so. Holiness, meekness, patience, humility, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, faith, love, each is might and every gift of the spirit is might."

"Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than form principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them."

"Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together."

"The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature."

"The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process."

"The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings, to keep our mind’s eye and our heart’s eye ever fixed on the land of promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it."

"The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men."

"The only way of setting the will free is to deliver it from willfulness."

"The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak."

"The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be."

"The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism."

"The virtue of Paganism was strength; the virtue of Christianity is obedience."

"They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold."

"Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel."

"We never know the true value of friends. While they live we are too sensitive of their faults: when we have lost them we only see their virtues."

"What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. No wonder then, that in this prudent country most people are so shy of praising anything."

"Curiosity is little more than another name for hope."

"A weak mind sinks under prosperity as well as under adversity. A strong and deep one has two highest tides, when the moon is at full, and when there is no moon."

"A statesman should follow public opinion as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins, and guiding them."

"Knowledge partakes of infinity; it widens with our capacities: the higher we mount in it, the vaster and more magnificent are the prospects it stretches out before us."

"Languages are barometers of national thought and character."

"Man, without religion, is the creature of circumstances."

"Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world, whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers."

"Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necromancy - by consulting the oracular dead."

"Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too, at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him."

"Nothing in the world is lawless except a slave."

"I have ever gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections."

"Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself."

"Oratory may be symbolized by a warrior’s eye, flashing from under a philosopher’s brow. But why a warrior’s eye rather than a poet’s? Because in oratory the will must predominate."

"Poverty breeds wealth; and wealth in its turn breeds poverty. The earth, to form the mould, is taken out of the ditch; and whatever may be the height of the one will be the depth of the other."

"The intellect of the wise is like glass. It admits the light of heaven and reflects it."

"The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on the very verge of truth."

"The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life."

"What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble while our hearts are so proud."