Great Throughts Treasury

"Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised."

"Man is the revelation of the Infinite, and it does not become finite in him. It remains the Infinite."

"There is always a multitude of reasons both in favor of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life lies in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them."

"When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger."

"A true knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power."

"Every faculty and virtue I possess can be used as an instrument with which to worry myself."

"In the presence of some people we inevitably depart from ourselves: we are inaccurate, we say things we do not feel, and talk nonsense. When we get home we are conscious that we have made fools of ourselves. Never go near these people."

"As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow only, a reason for the joyfulness of to-day."

"Blessed are they who heal us of self-despising. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious."

"I have a strange fancy - that there is one word which I was sent into the world to say. At times I can dimly make it out but I cannot see it. Nevertheless it seems to make all other speech seem beside the mark and futile."

"Men should not be too curious in analyzing and condemning any means which nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossils."

"One fourth of life is intelligible, the other three-fourths is unintelligible darkness; and our first duty is to cultivate the habit of not looking round the corner."

"Never say anything remarkable. It is sure to be wrong."

"Socialism, towards which everything is drifting, may turn out to be a great failure. In my opinion it will certainly fail, and the reaction will be disastrous and put us back beyond where we are now, but at any rate Socialism is an idea, and in so far as it aspires to govern the world by an idea it is progress."

"Stonehenge, after you get acquainted with it, is wonderful, but I find it disposes me to indefinite, vague misty sentiments, and these I try to avoid as much as possible."

"There is in a man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp."

"We cannot really understand a religion unless we have believed it."

"To die is easy when we are in perfect health. On a fine spring morning, out of doors, on the downs, mind and body sound and exhilarated, it would be nothing to lie down on the turf and pass away."

"What are the facts? Not those in Homer, Shakespeare, or even the Bible. The facts for most of us are a dark street, crowds, hurry, commonplaceness, loneliness, and, worse than all, a terrible doubt which can hardly be named as to the meaning and purpose of the world."

"What is more wonderful than the delight which the mind feels when it knows? This delight is not for anything beyond the knowing, but is in the act of knowing. It is the satisfaction of a primary instinct."

"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."