Great Throughts Treasury

"Every scholar is surrounded by wiser men than he."

"Every sweet hath its sour, every evil its good... for every thing you gain, you lose something."

"Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word."

"Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world."

"Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!"

"Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the door-latch they die outside."

"Fame is proof that people are gullible."

"Everything intercepts us from ourselves."

"Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of revolutions."

"Excellence is the perfect excuse. Do it well, and it matters little what."

"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance."

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays."

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty second of happiness."

"For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they are called cause, operation and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but we will call the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and the love of beauty. These three are equal. The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free."

"For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else."

"Genius is sacrificed to talent every day... The difference between Talent and Genius is, that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard... Genius is power; talent is applicability."

"From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all."

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both."

"God has infinite time to give us; but how did He give it? In one immense tract of lazy millenniums? No, but He cut it up into neat succession of new mornings, and, with each, therefore, a new idea, new invention, and new applications."

"God enters by a private door into every individual."

"Go put your creed into your deed."

"Government has come to be a trade, and is managed solely on commercial principles. A man plunges into politics to make his fortune, and only cares that the world shall last his days."

"Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better."

"Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men."

"Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality."

"Great thoughts ensure musical expression."

"Great geniuses have the shortest biographies."

"Great men have often the shortest biographies. Their real life is in their books or deeds. There is properly no history, only biography."

"Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself."

"He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty."

"Health is a condition of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness - an open and noble temper."

"He is great who confers the most benefits."

"He is a rich man who can avail himself of all man's faculties."

"I believe that our experience instructs us that the secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know and what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret."

"Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find their teams going the other way; every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote - justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility."

"Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character."

"How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and morning dew!"

"Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet."

"How are you desirous at the same time to live to old age, and at the same time not to see the death of any person whom you love?"

"I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply."

"I hate the prostitution of the word friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances."

"Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are not better than dreams."

"If a man examine carefully his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead."

"I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor or difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light and in large relations, whilst they must make painful corrections and keep vigilant eye on many sources of error."

"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse trap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

"If a man own land, the land owns him."

"If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being."

"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."

"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

"If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has a headache."