Great Throughts Treasury

"Job had his desire: he saw the face of God-and abhorred himself in dust and ashes. He sought justification; he found self-abhorrence.. Two things are clearly contained in, and manifest from, this poem: that not every man deserves for his sins to be punished everlastingly from the presence of the Lord; and that the best of men, when he sees the face of God, will know himself vile. God is just, and will never deal with the sinner as if he were capable of sinning the pure sin; yet if the best man be not delivered from himself, that self will sink him into Tophet."

"I've been thinking about it a great deal, and it seems to me that although one sixpence is as good as another sixpence, not twenty lambs would do instead of one sheep whose face you knew. Somehow, when once you've looked into anybody's eyes, right deep down into them, I mean, nobody will do for that one anymore. Nobody, ever so beautiful or so good, will make up for that one going out of sight."

"Learn these two things: never be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never fail daily to do that good which lies next to your hand. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord. Be charitable in view of it. God can afford to wait; why cannot we, since we have Him to fall back upon? Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. Trust to God to weave your little thread in to a web, though the patterns show it not yet."

"Let a man do right, not trouble himself about worthless opinion; the less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he find it to love men."

"Let death do what it can, there is just one thing it cannot destroy, and that is life. Never in itself, only in the unfaith of man, does life recognize any sway of death."

"Leaning with her back bowed into the back of the chair, her head hanging down and her hands in her lap, very miserable as she would say herself, not even knowing what she would like, except to go out and get very wet, catch a particularly nice cold and have to go to bed and take gruel."

"Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it."

"Let us understand very plainly, that a being whose essence was only power would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could be offered him."

"Let us endeavor to see plainly what we mean when we use the word justice, and whether we mean what we ought to mean when we use it--especially with reference to God. Let us come nearer to knowing what we ought to understand by justice, that is, the justice of God; for his justice is the live, active justice, giving existence to the idea of justice in our minds and hearts. Because he is just, we are capable of knowing justice; it is because he is just, that we have the idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us. What do we oftenest mean by justice? Is it not the carrying out of the law, the infliction of penalty assigned to offence? By a just judge we mean a man who administers the law without prejudice, without favor or dislike; and where guilt is manifest, punishes as much as, and no more than, the law has in the case laid down. It may not be that justice has therefore been done. The law itself may be unjust, and the judge may mistake; or, which is more likely, the working of the law may be foiled by the parasites of law for their own gain. But even if the law be good, and thoroughly administered, it does not necessarily follow that justice is done."

"Life eternal, this lady of thine hath a sore heart, and we cannot help her. Thou art help, O Mighty Love. Speak to her, and let her know thy will, and give her strength to do it, O Father of Jesus Christ, Amen."

"Life and religion are one, or neither is anything."

"Like weary waves thought follows upon thought, But the still depth beneath is all thine own."

"Life is everything. Many doubtless mistake the joy of life for life itself, and, longing after the joy, languish with a thirst at once poor and inextinguishable; but even that, thirst points to the one spring. These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man’s center, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his God: the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy."

"Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes"

"Love makes everything lovely: hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated."

"Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire."

"Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it."

"Love me, beloved; Hades and Death shall vanish away like a frosty breath; these hands, that now are at home in thine, shall clasp thee again, if thou art still mine; and thou shalt be mine, my spirit's bride, in the ceaseless flow of eternity's tide, if the truest love thy heart can know meet the truest love that from mine can flow. Pray God, beloved, for thee and me, that our souls may be wedded eternally."

"Man is not made for justice from his fellow, but for love, which is greater than justice, and by including supersedes justice. Mere justice is an impossibility, a fiction of analysis…. Justice to be justice must be much more than justice. Love is the law of our condition, without which we can no more render justice than a man can keep a straight line, walking in the dark."

"Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of."

"Many a tower, many an outlook fair"

"Many a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the gate of the kingdom."

"Many a wrong and it's curing song, many a road, and many an inn, Room to roam, but only one home, for all the world to win."

"Many feelings are simply too good to last--using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot coexist in the human frame. But the virtue of a mood depends by no means on its immediate presence. Like any other experience, it may be believed in, and, in its absence, which leaves the mind free to contemplate it, works even more good than its presence"

"Middling people are shocked at the wickedness of the wicked; Gibbie, who knew both so well, was shocked only at the wickedness of the righteous. He never came quite to understand Mr. Sclater: the inconsistent never can be understood. That only which has absolute reason in it can be understood of man. There is a bewilderment about the very nature of evil which only He who made up capable of evil that we might be good, can comprehend."

"Men who would rather receive salvation from God than God their salvation."

"My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think Thy answers make me what I am."

"Moderation is the basis of justice."

"Naturally, the first emotion of man towards the being he calls God, but of whom he knows so little, is fear. Where it is possible that fear should exist it is well that it should exist, cause continual uneasiness, and be cast out by nothing less than love.... Until love, which is the truth towards God, is able to cast out fear, it is well that fear should hold; it is a bond, however poor, between that which is and that which creates -- a bond that must be broken, but a bond that can be broken only by the tightening of an infinitely closer bond. Verily God must be terrible to those that are far from Him: for they fear He will do -- yea, is doing -- with them what they do not, cannot desire, and can ill endure... While they are such as they are, there is much in Him that cannot but affright them: they ought, they do well, to fear Him... To remove that fear from their hearts, save by letting them know His love with its purifying fire, a love which for ages, it may be, they cannot know, would be to give them up utterly to the power of evil. Persuade men that fear is a vile thing, that it is an insult to God, that He will have none of it -- while they are yet in love with their own will, and slaves to every movement of passionate impulse -- and what will the consequence be? That they will insult God as a discarded idol, a superstition, a falsehood, as a thing under whose evil influence they have too long groaned, a thing to be cast out and spit upon. After that, how much will they learn of Him?"

"Never was there a more injurious mistake than to say it was the business only of the clergy to care for souls."

"My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest."

"Never could we have known the heart of the Father, never felt it possible to love Him as sons, but for Him who cast Himself into the gulf that yawned between us. In and through Him we were foreordained to the son-ship: son-ship, even had we never sinned, never could we reach without Him. We should have been little children loving the Father indeed, but children far from the son-hood that understands and adores."

"No man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful."

"No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear."

"No man who will not forgive his neighbor, can believe that God is willing, yea wanting, to forgive him…. If God said, “I forgive you” to a man who hated his brother, and if (as impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How much would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him “You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation and are justified in your hate”? No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account: but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should be delivered from the hell of his hate. . . . The man would think, not that God loved the sinner, but that he forgave the sin, which God never does [i.e. What is usually called "forgiving the sin" means forgiving the sinner and destroying the sin]. Every sin meets with its due fate-inexorable expulsion from the paradise of God’s Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that He cannot forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon that possesses him."

"No story ever really ends, and I think I know why."

"No one is likely to remember what is entirely uninteresting to him."

"No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is. In fact, nobody is himself, and himself is nobody."

"No work noble or lastingly good can come of emulation any more than of greed: I think the motives are spiritually the same."

"Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God."

"Nothing is so deadening to the divine as a habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things."

"Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help."

"No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it - no place to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather."

"Not one of the family had ever cared for it on the ground of its old-fashionedness; its preservation was owing merely to the fact that their gardener was blessed with a wholesome stupidity rendering him incapable of unlearning what his father, who had been gardener there before him, had had marvelous difficulty in teaching him. We do not half appreciate the benefits to the race that spring from honest dullness. The clever people are the ruin of everything."

"Now I want you to think that in life troubles will come, which seem as if they never would pass away. The night and storm look as if they would last forever; but the calm and the morning cannot be stayed; the storm in its very nature is transient. The effort of nature, as that of the human heart, ever is to return to its repose, for God is Peace."

"O God! I cried and that was all. But what are the prayers of the whole universe more than expansion of that one cry? It is not what God can give us, but God that we want."

"O Lord, I have been talking to the people; thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone and the recoil of my word's airy ripple my heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: lay cool hands on my burning brain and press from my weak heart the swelling emptiness."

"O, lack and doubt and fear can only come because of plenty, confidence, and love! They are the shadow-forms about their feet, because they are not perfect crystal-clear to the all-searching sun in which they live. Dread of its loss is Beauty’s certain seal!"

"Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God’s will, obedience is man’s will; the two make one. The root life, knowing well the thousand troubles it would bring upon Him, has created, and goes on creating, other lives, that though incapable of self-being they may, by willed obedience, share in the bliss of His essential self-ordained being. If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours-no mere continuity of existence, for that in itself is worthless as hell, but a being that is one with the essential life."

"Obedience is the key to every door."