Great Throughts Treasury

"But yester-night I prayed aloud in anguish and in agony, up-starting from the fiendish crowd of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: a lurid light, a trampling throng, sense of intolerable wrong, and whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of revenge, the powerless will still baffled, and yet burning still! Desire with loathing strangely mixed on wild or hateful objects fixed. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, which all confused I could not know whether I suffered, or I did: for all seemed guilt, remorse or woe, my own or others still the same life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame."

"Chance is but the pseudonyme of God for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with His own sign manual."

"Chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail ."

"Call not that man wretched, who whatever else he suffers as to pain inflicted, or pleasure denied, has a child for whom he hopes and on whom he doats."

"Carv'd with figures strange and sweet, all made out of the carver's brain."

"Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered, tones of her blessed voice."

"Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process."

"Courage multiplies the chances of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always availing itself of them; and in this sense Fortune may be said to favor fools by those who, however prudent in their opinion, are deficient in valor and enterprise."

"Could I revive within me her symphony and song, to such a deep delight 'twould win me, that with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, that sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, B."

"Clothing the palpable and familiar with golden exhalations of the dawn."

"Constancy lives in realms above."

"Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black."

"Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast."

"Death but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life."

"Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation."

"Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."

"Davy's March of Glory, which he has run for the last six weeks?within which time by the aid and application of his own great discovery, of the identity of electricity and chemical attractions, he has placed all the elements and all their inanimate combinations in the power of man; having decomposed both the Alkalies, and three of the Earths, discovered as the base of the Alkalies a new metal... Davy supposes there is only one power in the world of the senses; which in particles acts as chemical attractions, in specific masses as electricity, and on matter in general, as planetary Gravitation... when this has been proved, it will then only remain to resolve this into some Law of vital Intellect?and all human knowledge will be Science and Metaphysics the only Science."

"Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer."

"Down to a sunless sea."

"Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'twas sad as sad could be; and we did speak only to break the silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, the bloody Sun, at noon, right up above the mast did stand, no bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

"Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself."

"Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts?and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us that makes the difference."

"Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible."

"Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

"During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two the priority belongs."

"Enveloping the earth."

"Each matin bell, the Baron saith, knells us back to a world of death."

"Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God."

"Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel ? dark misgiving, an ominous sinking at the inmost heart."

"Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, death came with friendly care: the opening bud to heaven convey?d, and bade it blossom there."

"Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'tis known that Thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit--It cannot be that Thou art gone!"

"Every human feeling is greater and larger than the exciting cause."

"Every subject in Davy's mind has the principle of Vitality. Living thoughts spring up like Turf under his feet."

"Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils."

"Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to his own Evidence."

"Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

"Experience informs us that the first defense of weak minds is to recriminate."

"Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises."

"Falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them."

"Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is."

"Farewell, farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all."

"Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; friendship is a sheltering tree; oh the joys that came down shower-like, of friendship, love, and liberty, ere I was old!"

"For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!"

"For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise."

"Five miles meandering with a mazy motion."

"For nutrition by digestion is certainly necessary to life, only under certain circumstances, but that life is previously necessary to digestion is absolutely certain under all circumstances. Besides, what other phenomenon of Life would the conception of assimilation, per se, or as it exists in the lowest order of animals, involve or explain?"

"Five miles meandering with a mazy motion through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns measureless to man, and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: and 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war!"

"For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten."

"For more than a thousand years the Bible, collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization science, law; in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the species, always supporting and often leading the way."