Great Throughts Treasury

"I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, I don't want my children growing up in a household like this. Susan said, Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore?" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it's all OK because he is so loved. He is surrounded by souls who would do anything to help him. And not only that--he has wisdom and patience of his own, buried deep inside his being, which will only reveal themselves over time and will always carry him through any trial. He is a gift from God to all of us." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"People think a soul mate is the one that fits them perfectly, and we all want. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that hinders and the person that your attention is directed to you, that could change your life. Probably the most important person you'll ever meet, but live forever with soulmate? No. Too painful. Soulmate in your life comes to you revealing a layer you, and then leave. And thank God for that." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's fial destination - the complete and merciless devaluation of self." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"For none can express thee, though all should approve thee. I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not more grief than ye can weep for. That is well-- that is light grieving!" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Therefore to this dog will I, tenderly not scornfully, render praise and favor: with my hand upon his head, is my benediction said therefore and forever." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Until they are of the age to use the brain." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Whatever's lost, it first was won; we will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, that Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Women know the way to rear up children (to be just); they know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense, and kissing full sense into empty words; which things are corals to cut life upon, although such trifles." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end." - Dorothy Parker

"Sin is not offense against God, but against our humanity. It is not a state which came to us and which we cannot throw off; it is an act of our own. Sin is anti-social conduct, due to the want of resistance on our part to the influences of the animal world behind us, selfishness, or to the legacy of a phase of civilization over which and beyond which we should have passed on." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

"Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you, the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours." - Emile Zola

"I assure you, a tiger, or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free . . . and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder... Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment." - Emma Goldman

"No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour" - Euripedes NULL

"O lady, nobility is thine, and thy form is the reflection of thy nature!" - Euripedes NULL

"What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!" - Gustave Flaubert

"The first blow is as good as two." -