Great Throughts Treasury

"The state of love is a state of grace."

"No individual can ultimately fail. The Divinity which descends into humanity is bound to re-gain its original state. "

"Ideal Love, stepped down to the level of the practical, day-to-day life, must mean the service of each to all within his or her sphere, a delicate consideration of others, a control that gives rise to peace, and cessation from every thought of cruelty and lust."

"Wisdom is not a question of learning facts with the mind; it can only be acquired through perfection of living."

"We have yet to discover the true incentive, the inner Will which will have an over-mastering effect upon our lives, and yet be present in every circumstance and incident. "

"What man really seeks is not perfection which is in the future, but fulfillment which is ever in the present."

"He is the wise man who has by perfect living gained the instinct of rightness by which he guides himself, whether in thought or action, who has found that centre of balance which is always over his point of contact with circumstances. He is the man whom Nature pours the riches of all her instincts. "

"The will is a product of integrity, not a child of contradictions."

"There is no wisdom without love."

"What we call "willing" is often but an inflation of ourselves, attended by a hardening."

"A beautiful thing is justified in itself, because it is itself, and no other thing."

"A beautiful thing is one in which the consciousness rests content, in which there is neither urge nor need to go beyond and find something else with which to round off and complete the experience."

"A truth is a truth to our consciousness only as it is fetched out of the voidness of the abstract and placed in the setting of its proper relationships in life. It is application which tests a principle and shapes its proper expression."

"A truth which does not emerge in the form of its appropriate expression is a truth which is devoid of power."

"Absolute Beauty is at the very source of manifestation, in the spiritual root of ourselves, though we have forgotten it in our headlong plunge into the world of separative matter. We must come to it in the end, which is a coming to the true nature of ourselves."

"Action and understanding are unified in the Will. An act of will that does not carry within itself understanding is no true will at all."

"All form is limiting, but Beauty ceases to limit, and fulfils the manifestation of Truth."

"All beauty springs from the same source, and all things beautiful are secretly in affinity with one another."

"All ideas which express the Truth are unities, forms of harmonies manifesting themselves in diversity."

"All ideals are heaven-inspired dreams, visions of Truth, which resides in its fullness in the Divine or spiritual Self. When the ideal and the real are one, thought and life coincide."

"All soft and tender feelings once recorded in the heart are an indelible promise, intimations of a fulfillment that shall abide forever."

"All virtues are forms of Truth; each is an effect proceeding from the very nature of the thing."

"An object of Beauty exists for itself, as a revelation of the One Beauty. The highest end that is served, possibly, is that revelation."

"An imagination which is trained in beauty is thereby trained in Truth."

"Anything that is wholly beautiful must have its own law of Beauty, its logic of expansion. Its nature is fixed by its essence."

"All the children of God - men, animals, trees, minerals, elemental lives - shall together go back to their common Parent, but in union amongst themselves."

"As we know a color only by its difference from others, so we need to grow in every manifestation of Truth to be aware of its opposite."

"Art of every sort, when it embodies Beauty, speaks the language of an invisible order in which each thing has its own significant place."

"Beauty is the creation of Life, which flows into a form and impresses it with the Truth which is at the very source of that flow."

"Beauty, not as an abstract principle but in its endless rendering, is the language of God; it translates the infinite, subjective Truth into its appropriate objective expression."

"Because Truth is one, there is no truth for the individual outside his own living."

"Before we can receive in our hearts the Truth which springs from the deepest part of ourselves, we have to be prepared by a cleansing, a baptism, not merely with water but also with fire."

"Beauty in form, Truth in idea, these are the outer and inner correlatives. Each attests the other."

"Beauty is a quality that belongs to the subjective perception of an objective relation in time and space, be it a melodious sequence, a harmony of color or sound, or the curvature of a shape."

"Beauty at its supreme point, when it is absolute, lifts one out of the object in which it is present. The pure artist works only for the love of his work, with no motive other than his self-abnegating spirit."

"As we think thoughts of live down here, all invisibly we drop seeds in that celestial soil where they will grow in unimaginable profusion and beauty."

"Beauty is ever a perfect adjustment. That which is beautiful - a poem, a piece of architecture, a melody, a flower - has a unity, a center of origin whence is its inspiration."

"Beauty is not susceptible to appropriation. If there is any beauty anywhere, it belongs to the very nature of things. It is as erroneous to regard as your possession the beauty of your form as it is to imagine that the beauty of the sunset belongs to yourself or anybody else."

"Before we can transcend limitations, whether in our own nature or in the circumstances around us, we must try to understand what it is that they are meant to teach."

"Each must discover the heavenliness, the expanding universe of his own being."

"By the force of Love the microcosm can be won. By that same power the macrocosm can be conquered."

"Desire is but will inverted. It is a pull of matter, instead of the free movement of the Spirit."

"Beware of the worm of self-conceit that feeds on the faults of others; destroy the sense of self-importance which eats like a canker the bud of one's pure aspirations."

"Each must discover his own way in life, and that way lies in his heart. Let him delve deeply into the depths of his being; his true center is not far from there."

"Determine to solve all problems created by the play of opposites and overcome all difficulties; will to attempt any precipice or fall into any abyss, in the unshaken conviction that while every vesture of manifestation may be splintered into its atoms, the invincible, eternal You will remain and arise."

"Every beautiful object has its unseen links with the heaven of God's own Ideas, and radiates an influence which is rained from above, subtle but potent."

"Each one of us must arouse that hidden Will in himself which will endure to the end."

"Each of us contains within himself the formula of his creation, his uniqueness, according to which is his expansion in time, the curve of his progress."

"Every fleeting thought, every passing fancy can make or mar the picture which should be the perfect representation of the Truth of oneself."

"Every beautiful thing is a window through which we can look into the ever-present Reality."