Great Throughts Treasury

"The first lesson of history is the good of evil."

"The first and last lesson of religion is, “The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are unseen are eternal.”"

"The glory of Friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship. My friends have come unsought. The great God gave them to me."

"The first point of courtesy must always be truth"

"The great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce."

"The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from nature some advantage without paying for it."

"The history of mankind is the history of arrested growth."

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

"The lie is in the surrender of the man to his appearance; as if a man should neglect himself and treat his shadow on the wall with marks of infinite respect."

"The meaning of good and bad… is simply helping or hurting."

"The less government we have the better – the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual."

"The oceanic working of Nature which accumulates a momentary individual as she forms a momentary wave in a running sea."

"The lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls."

"The moral cause of the world lies behind all else in the mind."

"The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances."

"The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses."

"The reward for a thing well cone is to have done it."

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it. There is no event greater in life than the appearance of new persons about our hearth, except it be the progress of the character which draws them."

"The right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it."

"The simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God."

"The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful and so on forever."

"The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education."

"The secret of genius is… first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use."

"The sum of wisdom is, that the time is never lost that is devoted to work."

"The order of things is as good as the character of the population permits."

"The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall it, for the event is only the actualizing of its thoughts. It is no wonder that particular dreams and presentiments should fall out and be prophetic."

"The only sin which we never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion."

"The use of history is to give to the present hour and its duty."

"The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts."

"The world can never be learned by learning all its details."

"The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word... Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment."

"The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animal-cule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity – all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb."

"There are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the Future; the Establishment and the Movement."

"There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself."

"The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires."

"There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit."

"There is a crack in everything God has made."

"There is One Mind, and… all the powers and privileges which lie in any, lie in all."

"There never was child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep."

"To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary."

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius."

"Truth and goodness and beauty are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty."

"We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine."

"We boast of our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry."

"We are made of contradictions – our freedom is necessary."

"We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns."

"We do not like those who unmask our illusions."

"We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim."

"We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital."

"We live in succession, in division, in part, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."