Great Throughts Treasury

"There is a hill to which I used to resort... The labour of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home. On a warm summer day the slow continued rise required continual effort, which carried away the sense of oppression. The familiar everyday scene was soon out of sight; I came to other trees, meadows, and fields; I began to breathe a new air and to have a fresher aspiration... Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself." - Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies

"My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me. At the age of twelve, before I had one year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life." - Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright

"The ever-present expectancy of death is never far removed from any of us - whether we realize it or not. None of us can avoid it. It comes alike to the great and to the unknown; to the righteous and to the unrighteous. Wherein we differ is not in our ability to avert it, but in the preparedness with which we meet it. At such times some question the judgments of God. Some find bitterness because of the circumstances and because of the seeming untimeliness of death." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans

"Don't depend on anything, wherever you are, just there is realization. Arising circumstances cannot change you. Even when you have bad habits, you will be free of them without further doing something about them." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it." - Robertson Davies

"Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it. " - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"When we're through with this earth and all these problems, we don't have to come back. But as long as we're here we have a job to do and a purpose to fulfill, and that means dealing with the circumstances around us." - Rolling Thunder, born Louis Belmont Newell NULL

"Don't depend on anything, wherever you are, just there is realization. Arising circumstances cannot change you. Even when you have bad habits, you will be free of them without further doing something about them." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." - Silvio Pellico

"This administration is totally colorblind." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"We must teach that men are great only on their intrinsic value, and not on the position they may incidentally happen to occupy." - Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell

"Each time it is different." - Russian Proverbs

"Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God choose, because it is His right." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"I see that you are not sure of what you should do. You must remain steadfast, Monsieur. It would be a great wrong for you to leave and an irreparable scandal to the town and the Company. If you were to abandon the house, I do not think people would ever be willing to welcome us back. Fear not; calm will follow the storm, and perhaps soon." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"A strike on any scale is merely a trial of industrial strength, an application of the law of supply and demand, so often quoted by labor's opponents. How can a society based on free contract and free competition object to such a method of determining the comparative strength and endurance of capital and labor?" - Samuel Gompers

"War experiences led me to wonder if Socialism, in addition to its philosophic and economic short-comings, had not been manipulated to further sinister purposes." - Samuel Gompers

"The birthplace of success for each person is in his Inner-Consciousness. The Inner-Consciousness will use whatever it is given. If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow. And since the only real freedom a person has is the choice of what thoughts he will feed to his Inner-Consciousness he is totally responsible for the outcomes he gets." - Sidney Madwed

"We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Torah, prayer and contemplation of death will help you in your struggle against the Evil inclination." - Simeon ben Lakish, or Shimon ben Lakish or Reish Lakish

"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct... and to refrain from destruction." - Simone Weil

"By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law." - Simone Weil

"The respect inspired by the link between man and the reality alien to this world can make itself evident to that part of man which belongs to the reality of this world. The reality of this world is necessity. The part of man which is in this world is the part which is in bondage to necessity and subject to the misery of need. The one possibility of indirect expression of respect for the human being is offered by men's needs, the needs of the soul and of the body, in this world." - Simone Weil

"In the world of mind, as in that of matter, we always occupy a position. He who is continually changing his point of view will see more, and that too more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The man who will not refrain from expressing his sentiments and manifesting his feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest man, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature." - Stephen Wolfram

"Dusk - of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants --such walls as in time may linger in a mere fable." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"I want to meet my God awake." - Thomas Carlyle

"Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there." - Thomas Hardy

"The most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connections; whereby men register their thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which, there had been amongst men, neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears, and wolves." - Thomas Hobbes

"By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves." - Thomas Jefferson

"From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation." - Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." - Thomas Jefferson

"To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends." - Thomas Jefferson

"In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. It is more than silence." - Thomas Merton

"The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world is a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence. It is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly allied to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for prudence furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served, as is the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish the embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for he authorized it to be made known to the French Government, as a confidential matter (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here state), he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr. Jay's mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr. Jay's authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of the western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in American vessels." - Thomas Paine

"The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?" - Thomas Paine

"Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more important, of who we are, and who we might become. They unlock our energies, our imaginations, and our minds. Effective teachers pose compelling questions, explain options, teach us to reason, suggest possible directions, and urge us on. The best teachers, like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives." - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

"For 'tis a truth well known to most, that whatsoever thing is lost, we seek it, ere it comes to light, in every cranny but the right." - William Cowper

"In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order." - Will and Ariel Durant

"One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"A healthy society, firmly resting on its own founda­tion, possesses a genuine `structure' with many interme­diate stages; it exhibits a necessarily `hierarchi­cal' composition...where each individual has the good fortune of knowing his position. Whereas such a society is based on the grouping functions of genuine communi­ties filled with the spirit of human fellowship (such as the neighbourhood, the family, the parish, the Church, the occupation), society has during the last hundred years moved further and further away from such an ideal and has disintegrated into a mass of abstract individuals who are solitary and isolated as human beings, but packed tightly like termites in their role of social functionaries." - Wilhelm Röepke

"The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm." - Walter Bagehot

"The ideal examples of poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one single effect." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Growth and value investing are joined at the hip." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"Authentic empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God's work, peacefully and harmoniously." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?" - Walker Percy

"Do everything to demonstrate, and in the most emphatic manner, our sympathy for the Moslems, their autonomy, independence, etc." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin