Great Throughts Treasury

"Passion is the great mover and spring of the soul: when men's passions are strongest, they may have great and noble effects; but they are then also apt to fall into the greatest miscarriages."

"A great proportion of the wretchedness which has embittered married life, has originated in a negligence of trifles."

"All false practices and affections of knowledge are more odious to God, and deserve to be so to men, than any want or defect of knowledge can be."

"Covetousness, by a greediness of getting more, deprives itself of the true end of getting; it loses the enjoyment of what it had got."

"Do not too many believe no zeal to be spiritual, but what is censorious or vindictive? Whereas no zeal is spiritual that is not also charitable."

"Does not the whole tenor of the divine law positively require humility and meekness to all men?"

"Envy, malice, covetousness, and revenge are abolished: a new race of virtues and graces, more divine, more moral, more humane, are planted in their stead."

"Forever all goodness will be most charming; forever all wickedness will be most odious."

"Greediness of getting more, deprives... the enjoyment of what it had got."

"Groundless prejudices and weaknesses of conscience, instead of tenderness, mislead too many others, too many, otherwise good men."

"If I will obey the gospel, no distance of place, no strangeness of country, can make any man a stranger to me."

"Charity is made the constant companion and perfection of all virtues; and well it is for that virtue where it most enters and longest stays."

"Are we not to pity and supply the poor, though they have no relation to us? No relation? That cannot be. The gospel styles them all our brethren: nay, they have a nearer relation to us?our fellow-members; and both these from their relation to our Saviour himself, who calls them his brethren."

"If to be the Author of new things, be a crime; how will the first Civilizers of Men, and makers of Laws, and Founders of Governments escape? Whatever now delights us in the Works of Nature, that excels the rudeness of the first Creation, is New. Whatever we see in Cities, or Houses, above the first wildness of Fields, and meanness of Cottages, and nakedness of Men, had its time, when this imputation of Novelty, might as well have bin laid to its charge. It is not therefore an offence, to profess the introduction of New things, unless that which is introduc'd prove pernicious in itself; or cannot be brought in, without the extirpation of others, that are better."

"In all works of liberality something more is to be considered besides the occasion of the givers; and that is the occasion of the receivers."

"In the Royal Society, there has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars."

"Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must sometimes be scatter'd without any return: much violence, and vigor of thoughts must attend it: some irregularities, and excesses must be granted it, that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence."

"It is always esteemed the greatest mischief a man can do to those whom he loves, to raise men's expectations of them too high by undue and impertinent commendations."

"It is certainly a great disparagement to virtue and learning itself that those very things which only make men useful in the world should incline them to leave it. This ought never to be allowed to good men, unless the bad had the same moderation, and were willing to follow them into the wilderness. But if the one shall contend to get out of employment, while the other strive to get into it, the affairs of mankind are likely to be in so ill a posture that even the good men themselves will hardly be able to enjoy their very retreats in security."

"Opportunity is in respect to time, in some sense, as time is in respect to eternity: it is the small moment, the exact point, the critical minute, on which every good work so much depends."

"That spotless modesty of private and public life, that generous spirit which all other Christians ought to labour after, should look in us as if they were natural."

"The only true zeal is that which is guided by a good light in the head, and that which consists of good and innocent affections in the heart."

"The true profession of Christianity inviolably engages all its followers to do good to all men."

"They have never affirm'd anything, concerning the Cause, till the Trial was past: whereas, to do it before, is a most venomous thing in the making of Sciences; for whoever has fix'd on his Cause, before he experimented; can hardly avoid fitting his Experiment to his Observations, to his own Cause, which he had before imagin'd; rather than the Cause to the Truth of the Experiment itself."

"Tis the property of all true knowledge, especially spiritual, to enlarge the soul by filling it; to enlarge it without swelling it; to make it more capable, and more earnest to know, the more it knows."

"True zeal is not any one single affection of the soul, but a strong mixture of many holy affections, filling the heart with all pious intentions; all, not only uncounterfeit, but most fervent."

"What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself."

"The head truly enlightened will presently have a wonderful influence in purifying the heart; and the heart really affected with goodness, will much conduce to the directing of the head."

"Poetry is the mother of superstition."

"Whatever you dislike in another person take care to correct in yourself."

"Those things in ourselves are the only proper objects of our zeal, which, in others, are the unquestionable subjects of our praises."

"This doctrine of God?s good will towards men, this command of men?s proportionable good will to one another, is not this the very body and substance, this the very spirit and life, of our Saviour?s whole institution?"