Great Throughts Treasury

"If we must accept Fate, we are no less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character."

"If man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow."

"I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and their learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?"

"Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?"

"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free."

"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."

"It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves."

"It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

"It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do.""

"Life is a festival only to the wise."

"Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know."

"Men are respectable only as they respect."

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is for you."

"No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back."

"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duties to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books."

"No man really understands the truth until he has contended against it."

"Money often costs too much."

"Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone."

"Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"Our distrust is very expensive."

"Of cheerfulness or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains."

"People only see what they are prepared to see."

"Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring."

"People say law, but they mean wealth."

"Out of came all things that are still written and debated among men of thought."

"Self-trust is the essence of heroism."

"Skill to do comes of doing."

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

"Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions."

"Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day."

"Success is to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children."

"The ancestor of every action is a thought."

"Talent alone cannot make a writer; there must be a man behind the book."

"Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactor."

"The bitterest tragic element in life is the belief in a brute fate or destiny."

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."

"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."

"The less government we have, the better: the fewer laws and less confided power."

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."

"The meaning of good and bad, or better and worse, is simply helping or hurting."

"The only gift is a portion of thyself."

"The years teach much which the days never know."

"The things taught in school are not an education but the means of an education."

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one."

"The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war."

"The secret of genius is...first, last, midst, and without end to honor every truth by use."

"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to other. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul, and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle."