Great Throughts Treasury

"Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!"

"Not one false man but doth uncountable evil."

"Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, priest and prophet to lead us to heaven-ward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward."

"Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom."

"Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment."

"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight."

"Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor."

"O Time! Time! how it brings forth and devours! And the roaring flood of existence rushes on forever similar, forever changing!"

"O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other."

"Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment."

"O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim."

"Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him."

"Of all the acts of man, repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults . . . is to be conscious of none."

"Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books."

"Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy... But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said... Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there... Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions."

"Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all."

"Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation."

"Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakespeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! I"

"Oh, give us the man who sings at his work."

"Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us."

"Once again awakened the thought not to doze."

"OH, Heaven,it is mysterious,it is awful to consider."

"On the whole we must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration."

"One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music."

"One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO."

"One monster there is in the world, the idle man."

"Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others."

"Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there."

"Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common."

"Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility."

"Over the times thou hast no power.-To redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee. Solely over one man therein thou hast a quite absolute, uncontrollable power.-Him redeem and make honest."

"Painful for a person is rebellious independence, only in loving companionship with his associates does a person feel safe: Only in reverently bowing down before the higher does a person feel exalted."

"Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk"

"Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak"

"Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?"

"Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought."

"Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given."

"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!"

"Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!"

"Rare benevolence, the minister of God."

"Properly speaking, all true work is religion."

"Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than fiction."

"Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation."

"Reform, like charity, must begin at home."

"Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, but the stars are there, and will reappear."

"Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science."

"Rest is a fine medicine. Let your stomachs rest, ye dyspeptics; let your brain rest, you wearied and worried men of business; let your limbs rest, ye children of toil!"

"Ridicule is the language of the devil."

"Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons able and willing to furnish the record."

"Roguery is thought by some to be cunning and laughable: it is neither; it is devilish."