Great Throughts Treasury

"War disorganizes, but it is to reorganize."

"War is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms. The question for us is only how soon?"

"War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic of insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels."

"We are always getting ready to live, but never living."

"We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the richness of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence."

"We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today."

"We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power."

"We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

"We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing."

"We never touch but at points."

"We rail at trade, but the historians of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery."

"We are prisoners of ideas."

"We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body."

"We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables."

"We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in education."

"What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health."

"Weed; a plant whose virtues have not been yet discovered."

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

"What is the first business of him who philosophizes? To throw away self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows."

"What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess,, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often waste its efforts in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it."

"Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. IT begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged."

"What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation."

"What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

"Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves."

"When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new."

"Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his cloths, and another owns a country."

"Whatever limits us we call Fate."

"When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands."

"Who cannot circumnavigate the sea of thoughts and things at home?"

"When the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; thee is not any literary reputation, nor the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned."

"Who so would be a man, must be a nonconformist."

"Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who are made up of the same elements?"

"Wisdom is infused into every form."

"Who loses a day loses life."

"Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short tie, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while."

"Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty."

"Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according tot he laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all."

"With the Past, as past, I have nothing to do; nor with the Future as future; I live now, and will verify all past history in my own moments."

"With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing."

"Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar."

"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing."

"Without consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall."

"Work is victory."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he know that every day is Doomsday."

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has earned anything rightly until he knows that every day is doomsday. Today is a king in disguise. Today always looks mean to the thoughtless, in the face of a uniform experience that all good and great and happy actions are made up precisely of these blank todays. Let us not be deceived, let us unmask the king as he passes."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… Speak what you think now in hard words; and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today."

"You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits."

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."