Great Throughts Treasury

"No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else."

"None that feels sensibly the decays of age, and his life wearing off, can figure to himself those imaginary charms in riches and praise, that men are apt to do in the warmth of their blood."

"Of the several forms of government that have been or are in the world, that cause seems commonly the better that has the better advocate, or is advantaged by fresher experience."

"Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves."

"Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves."

"Piety, as it is thought a way to the favour of God, and fortune, as it looks like the effect either of that, or at least of prudence and courage, beget authority."

"Prisoners became slaves, and continued so unless enfranchised by their masters."

"Public business suffers by private infirmities, and kingdoms fall into weaknesses by the diseases or decays of those that manage them."

"Reacting to evangelists' fondness for quoting Isaiah 1:18, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. . . ." All my sins are grey."

"Revolutions of state, many times, make way for new institutions and forms; and often determine in either setting up some tyranny at home, or bringing in some conquest from abroad."

"Science has its being in a perpetual mental restlessness."

"Since we cannot escape the pursuit of passions, and perplexity of thoughts, there is no way left but to endeavor all we can either to subdue or divert them."

"So that a paradise, among them seems to have been a large space of ground adorned and beautified with all sorts of trees, both of fruits and of forest, either found there before it was enclosed, or planted after; either cultivated like gardens, for shades and for walks, with fountains or streams, and all sorts of plants usual in the climate, and pleasant to the eye, the smell, or the taste; or else employed like our parks, for enclosure and harbor of all sorts of wild beasts, as well, as for the pleasure of riding and walking: and so they were of more or less extent, and of different entertainment, according to the several humors of the Princes that ordered and enclosed them."

"Socrates used to say that it was pleasant to grow old with good health and a good friend; and he might have reason: a man may be content to live while he is no trouble to himself or his friends; but after that, it is hard if he be not content to die. I knew and esteemed a person abroad who used to say, a man must be a mean wretch who desired to live after threescore years old. But so much, I doubt, is certain, that in life, as in wine, he that will drink it good must not draw it to the dregs. Where this happens, one comfort of age may be, that whereas younger men are usually in pain whenever they are not in pleasure, old men find a sort of pleasure when they are out of pain; and as young men often lose or impair their present enjoyments by craving after what is to come, by vain hopes, or fruitless fears, so old men relieve the wants of their age by pleasing reflections upon what is past. Therefore, men in the health and vigour of their age should endeavour to fill their lives with reading, with travel, with the best conversation and the worthiest actions, either in public or private stations; that they may have something agreeable left to feed on when they are old, by pleasing remembrances."

"Some are brave one day, and cowards another, as great captains have often told me, from their own experience and observation."

"Some writers in casting up the goods most desirable in life have given them this rank: health, beauty, and riches."

"Something like home that is not home is to be desired: it is found in the house of a friend."

"Study gives strength to the mind, conversation grace; the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness."

"Submission is the only reasoning between a creature and its Maker, and contentment in his will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes."

"Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelar goddess of health and universal medicine of life."

"The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. - If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered."

"The best figure of a garden I esteem an oblong upon a descent."

"The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it."

"The best service they could do to the state was to mend the lives of the persons who composed it."

"The bold and sufficient pursue their game with more passion, endeavor, and application, and therefore often succeed."

"The breaking down an old frame of government and erecting a new, seems like the cutting down an old oak and planting a young one: it is true the grandson may enjoy the shade and the mast, but the planter, besides the pleasure of imagination, has no other benefits."

"The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members."

"The cities fell often under tyrannies which spring naturally out of popular governments."

"The command in war is given to the strongest, or to the bravest; and in peace, taken up and exercised by the boldest."

"The desire of leisure is much more natural than of business and care."

"The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies."

"The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humour, and the fourth wit."

"The government which takes in the consent of the greatest number of the people may justly be said to have the broadest bottom; and if it be terminated in the authority of one single person, it may be said to have the narrowest top; and so makes the firmest pyramid."

"The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home."

"The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor."

"The problem of evil... Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it?"

"The prophets were taught to know the will of God, and thereby instruct the people, and enabled to prophesy as a testimony of their being sent by heaven."

"The rage of people is like that of the sea, which once breaking bounds overflows a country with that suddenness and violence as leaves no hopes of flying."

"There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others."

"There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man. The Malvern Manifesto: Drawn up by a Conference of the Province of York, January 10, 1941; signed for the Conference by Temple, then Archbishop of York (later Archbishop of Canterbury)."

"These passages in that book were enough to humble the presumption of our modern sciolists, if their pride were not as great as their ignorance."

"They do but trace over the paths that have been beaten by the ancients; or comment, critic, and flourish upon them."

"Those forms are best which have been longest received and authorized in a nation by custom and use."

"Those only are regarded who are true to their party; and all the talent required is to be hot, to be heady, to be violent on one side or the other."

"Though I may not be able to inform men more than they know, yet I may give them the occasion to consider."

"Tis obvious what rapport there is between the conceptions and languages in every country, and how great a difference this must make in the excellence of books."

"To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God."

"Upon this I remember a strain of refined civility: that when any woman went to see another of equal birth, she worked at her own work in the other?s house."

"Valor gives awe, and promises protection to those who want heart or strength to defend themselves. This makes the authority of men among women, and that of a master-buck in a numerous herd."

"We bring into the world with us a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the longest and unquiet at the best."