Great Throughts Treasury

"The seed dies into a new life, and so does man."

"The two pillars of 'political correctness' are: (a) willful ignorance (b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth."

"The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light."

"The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical. What Paul cares about is plain enough to the true heart, however far from plain to the man whose desire to understand goes ahead of his obedience."

"The west is broken into bars Of orange, gold, and gray, Gone is the sun, come are the stars, And night infolds the day."

"The ways of God go down into microscopic depths as well as up to telescopic heights. … So with mind; the ways of God go into the depths yet unrevealed to us: He knows His horses and dogs as we cannot know them, because we are not yet pure sons of God."

"Then came the reflection, how little at any time could a father do for the wellbeing of his children! The fact of their being children implied their need of an all-powerful father: must there not then be such a father? Therewith the truth dawned upon him, that first of truths, which all his church-going and Bible-reading had hitherto failed to disclose, that, for life to be a good thing and worth living, a man must be the child of a perfect father, and know him. In his terrible perturbation about his children, he lifted up his heart—not to the Governor of the world; not to the God of Abraham or Moses; not in the least to the God of the Kirk; least of all to the God of the Shorter Catechism; but to the faithful creator and Father of David Barclay. The aching soul which none but a perfect father could have created capable of deploring its own fatherly imperfection, cried out to the father of fathers on behalf of his children, and as he cried, a peace came stealing over him such as he had never before felt."

"The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us."

"The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life."

"Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down. That is the way, he said. But there are no stairs. You must throw yourself in. There is no other way."

"Then they cease to show themselves in the form of duties and appear as they more truly are, absolute truths, essential realities, eternal delights. The man is a true man who chooses duty: he is a perfect man who at length never thinks of duty, who forgets the name of it."

"Then what do you see? asked Irene, who perceived at once that for her not to believe him was at least as bad as for him not to believe her."

"There are many things in which one and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of God."

"There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little birds and all."

"There are those even who, not believing in any ear to hear, any heart to answer, will yet pray. They say it does them good; they pray to nothing at all, but they get spiritual benefit. I will not contradict their testimony. So needful is prayer to the soul that the mere attitude of it may encourage a good mood. Verily to pray to that which is not, is in logic a folly: yet the good that, they say, comes of it, may rebuke the worse folly of their unbelief, for it indicates that prayer is natural, and how could it be natural if inconsistent with the very mode of our being?"

"There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing"

"There is a chamber also (O God, humble and accept my speech)-a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man-out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made-to reveal the secret things of the Father."

"There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything... He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss."

"There is an aching that is worse than any pain."

"There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most skeptical have ever been the most credulous."

"There is little hope of the repentance and redemption of certain some until they have committed one or another of the many wrong things of which they are daily, through a course of unrestrained selfishness, becoming more and more capable."

"There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning."

"There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator."

"There is no harm in being afraid. The only harm is in doing what Fear tells you. Fear is not your master! Laugh in his face and he will run away."

"There is no inborn longing that shall not be fulfilled. I think that is as certain as the forgiveness of sins."

"There is no strength in unbelief. - Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. - It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve."

"There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyze. The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst--symbol and picture of that draught for which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through my room, yea, babbling along my table--this water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God."

"There was no pride, pomp, or circumstance of glorious war in this poor, domestic strife, this seemingly sordid and unheroic, miserably unheroic, yet high, eternal contest!"

"They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself."

"There is one show of breeding vulgarity seldom assumes, simplicity."

"There is something in the very presence and actuality of a thing to make one able to bear it; but a man may weaken himself for bearing what God intends him to bear, by trying to bear what God does not intend him to bear. . . . We have no right to school ourselves to an imaginary duty. When we do not know, then what he lays upon us is not to know."

"There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in, so afraid that he takes himself in altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a thing is to have it between his teeth."

"They were in a better condition, acknowledging only a terror above them flaming on that unknown mountain height, than stooping to worship the idol below them. Fear is nobler than sensuality. Fear is better than no God, better than a god made with hands. In that fear lay deep hidden the sense of the infinite. The worship of fear is true, though very low; and though not acceptable to God in itself -- for only the worship of spirit and of truth is acceptable to him -- yet even in His sight it is precious. For he regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, towards that image after which He made them that they might grow to it. Therefore a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite progress. A condition which of declension would indicate a devil, may of growth indicate a saint."

"These relations are facts of man’s nature. … He is so constituted as to understand them at first more than he can love them, with the resulting advantage of having thereby the opportunity of choosing them purely because they are true: so doing he chooses to love them, and is enabled to love them in the doing, which alone can truly reveal them to him and make the loving"

"Things come to the poor that can’t get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor—one that no man covets, and but a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize."

"They utter but a feeble part: hear thou the depths from which they call, the voiceless longing of my heart."

"Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed."

"Think not about thy sin so as to make it either less or greater in thine own eyes. Bring it to Jesus and let Him show thee how vile a thing it is. And leave it to Him to judge thee, sure that He will judge thee justly; extenuating nothing, for He hath to cleanse thee utterly; and yet forgetting no smallest excuse that may cover the amazement of thy guilt or witness for thee that not with open eyes didst thou do the deed. . . . But again, I say, let it be Christ that excuseth thee. He will do it to more purpose than thou, and will not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair too much."

"This is and has been the Father’s work from the beginning-to bring us into the home of His heart."

"Those are not the tears of repentance! ... Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates."

"Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the King’s highway for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the roadside."

"Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly."

"This made it the more likely that he had seen a true vision; for instead of making common things look commonplace, as a false vision would have done, it had made common things disclose the wonderful that was in them."

"This is a sane, wholesome, practical, working faith: That it is a man's business to do the will of God; second, that God himself takes on the care of that man; and third, that therefore that man ought never to be afraid of anything."

"This is another to be added to the many proofs that verisimilitude is not in the least an essential element of verity."

"Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking a pocket? A thief who was trying to reform would."

"Thou goest thine, and I go mine— Many ways we wend; Many days, and many ways, Ending in one end. Many a wrong, and its curing song; Many a road, and many an inn; Room to roam, but only one home for all the world to win."

"Though I cannot promise to take you home, said North Wind, as she sank nearer and nearer to the tops of the houses, I can promise you it will be all right in the end. You will get home somehow."

"Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care For times and seasons -- but this one glad day Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights That flash in the girdle of the year so fair When thou wast born a man -- because always Thou wast and art a man through all the flights Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play."

"Thy will be done. I yield up everything. 'The life is more than meat' -- then more than health; tThe body more than raiment' -- then more than wealth; the hairs I made not, thou art numbering. Thou art my life--I the brook, thou the spring. Because thine eyes are open, I can see; because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me."