Great Throughts Treasury

"Whereas "false stories" can be told anywhere and at any time, myths must not be recited except during a period of sacred time (usually in autumn or winter, and only at night).... This custom has survived even among peoples who have passed beyond the archaic stage of culture. Among the Turco-Mongols and the Tibetans the epic songs of the Gesar cycle can be recited only at night and in winter." - Mircea Eliade

"The Ten Mohist Doctrines [paraphrase] As their movement developed, the Mohists came to present themselves as offering a collection of ten key doctrines, divided into five pairs. The ten doctrines correspond to the titles of the ten triads, the ten sets of three essays that form the core of the Mozi. Although the essays in each triad differ in detail, the gist of each doctrine may be briefly summarized as follows. “Elevating the Worthy” and “Conforming Upward.” The purpose of government is to achieve a stable social, economic, and political order (zhi, pronounced “jr”) by promulgating a unified conception of morality (yi). This task of moral education is to be carried out by encouraging everyone to “conform upward” to the good example set by social and political superiors and by rewarding those who do so and punishing those who do not. Government is to be structured as a centralized, bureaucratic state led by a virtuous monarch and managed by a hierarchy of appointed officials. Appointments are to be made on the basis of competence and moral merit, without regard for candidates' social status or origins. “Inclusive Care” and “Rejecting Aggression.” To achieve social order and exemplify the key virtue of ren (humanity, goodwill), people must inclusively care for each other, having as much concern for others' lives, families, and communities as for their own, and in their relations with others seek to benefit them. Military aggression is wrong for the same reasons that theft, robbery, and murder are: it harms others in pursuit of selfish benefit, while ultimately failing to benefit Heaven, the spirits, or society as a whole. “Thrift in Utilization” and “Thrift in Funerals.” To benefit society and care for the welfare of the people, wasteful luxury and useless expenditures must be eliminated. Seeking always to bring wealth to the people and order to society, the ren (humane) person avoids wasting resources on extravagant funerals and prolonged mourning (which were the custom in ancient China). “Heaven's Intention” and “Elucidating Ghosts.” Heaven is the noblest, wisest moral agent, so its intention is a reliable, objective standard of what is morally right (yi) and must be respected. Heaven rewards those who obey its intention and punishes those who defy it, hence people should strive to be humane and do what is right. Social and moral order (zhi) can be advanced by encouraging belief in ghosts and spirits who reward the good and punish the wicked. “Rejecting Music” and “Rejecting Fatalism.” The humane (ren) person opposes the extravagant musical entertainment and other luxuries enjoyed by rulers and high officials, because these waste resources that could otherwise be used for feeding and clothing the common people. Fatalism is not ren, because by teaching that our lot in life is predestined and human effort is useless, it interferes with the pursuit of economic wealth, a large population, and social order (three primary goods that the humane person desires for society). Fatalism fails to meet a series of justificatory criteria and so must be rejected." - Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL

"Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent." - Nancy Astor, fully Lady Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess Astor

"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"In each human heart terror survives The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear All that they would disdain to think were true: Hypocrisy and custom make their minds The fanes of many a worship, now outworn. They dare not devise good for man’s estate, And yet they know not that they do not dare." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"In the course of ages the nucleus of social custom inscribed in law has been subjected to but slight and gradual modifications." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"Legislators confounded in one code the two currents of custom of which we have just been speaking, the maxims which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life in common, and the mandates which are meant to ensure external existence to inequality." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"It is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the Law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that everything else is a trifle." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

"Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

"The empire of custom is most mighty." - Publius Syrus

"But from the time I was in college I learned that there is nothing one could imagine which is so strange and incredible that it was not said by some philosopher; and since that time, I have recognized through my travels that all those whose views are different from our own are not necessarily, for that reason, barbarians or savages, but that many of them use their reason either as much as or even more than we do. I also considered how the same person, with the same mind, who was brought up from infancy either among the French or the Germans, becomes different from what they would have been if they had always lived among the Chinese or among the cannibals, and how, even in our clothes fashions, the very thing that we liked ten years ago, and that we may like again within the next ten years, appears extravagant and ridiculous to us today. Thus our convictions result from custom and example very much more than from any knowledge that is certain... truths will be discovered by an individual rather than a whole people." - René Descartes

"The path of God is a daily cross. No one has ascended into Heaven by means of ease, for we know where the way of ease leads and how it ends." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"When a thing is done again and again, it seems to proceed from a deliberate judgment of reason. Accordingly, custom has the force of a law, abolishes law, and is the interpreter of law." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"You say you are not happy in the Mission. That, in itself, is not a sign that God does not want you there. Perfect contentment is never to be found, in whatever place and condition one may be. This life is full of annoyances and troubles both of mind and of body; it is a state of continual agitation, which snatches peace of mind from those who think they possess it and eludes those who seek it. Did Our Lord lead an easy life?" - Saint Vincent de Paul

"Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk." - Samuel Butler

"As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a dozen cocks' wattles placed behind each other. In front of this creature was an absurd manikin, or dwarf, in human form, who stood staring at it." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"If anyone has put his trust in him as a man without a human mind, he is wholly bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not assumed he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"Prize and study the Scripture. We can have no delight in meditation on him unless we know him; and we cannot know him but by the means of his own revelation; when the revelation is despised, the revealer will be of little esteem. Men do not throw off God from being their rule, till they throw off Scripture from being their guide; and God must need be cast off from being an end, when the Scripture is rejected from being a rule. Those that do not care to know his will, that love to be ignorant of his nature, can never be affected to his honor. Let therefore the subtleties of reason vail to the doctrine of faith, and the humor of the will to the command of the word." - Stephen Charnock

"It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo

"Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given." - Thomas Carlyle

"On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune." - Thomas Hardy

"The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call ‘dreams.’ And these also, as also all other imaginations, have been before, either totally or by parcels, in the sense. And, because in sense, the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no imagination, and therefore no dream, but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the connection they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion; whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being now benumbed, so as there is no new object which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear in this silence of sense than our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often nor constantly think of the same persons, places, objects, and actions, that I do waking, nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts, dreaming, as at other times, and because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied, that, being awake, I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake." - Thomas Hobbes

"Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest." - John Wilkins

"The machine can free man or enslave him; it can make of this world something resembling a paradise or a purgatory. Men have it within their power to achieve a security hitherto dreamed of only by the philosophers, or they may go the way of the dinosaurs, actually disappearing from the earth because they fail to develop the social and political intelligence to adjust to the world which their mechanical intelligence has created." - William Carleton

"The solemn fog; significant and budge; a fool with judges, amongst fools a judge." - William Cowper

"Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think of putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"All achievement should be measured in human happiness." - Walter Lippmann

"Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings." - Walter Lippmann

"Against the groaning mast I stand, the Atlantic surges swell, to bear me from my native land and Zo?'s wild farewell. From billow upon billow hurl'd I can yet hear her say, `And is there nothing in the world worth one short hour's delay?' `Alas, my Zo?! were it thus, I should not sail alone, nor seas nor fates had parted us, but are you all my own?' Thus were it, never would burst forth my sighs, Heaven knows how true! But, though to me of little worth, the world is much to you. `Yes,' you shall say, when once the dream (So hard to break!) is o'er, `My love was very dear to him, my fame and peace were more.'" - Walter Savage Landor

"If... I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain." - Washington Irving

"It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow" - Washington Irving

"The best economy, economy of words." - Welsh Proverbs

"It was when the trees were leafless first in November and their blackness became apparent, that one first knew the eccentric to be the base of design." - Wallace Stevens

"I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"The darkness is the realm of error." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"And they defend themselves by the opinion of Socrates, of Cato, of Plato, and of St. Clement; but, as you say, they misunderstand the opinions of these thinkers. And the inhabitants of the solar city ascribe this to their want of education, since they are by no means learned in philosophy. Nevertheless, they send abroad to discover the customs of nations, and the best of these they always adopt. Practice makes the women suitable for war and other duties. Thus they agree with Plato, in whom I have read these same things." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"Everyone is judged by the first master of his trade, and thus all the head artificers are judges. They punish with exile, with flogging, with blame, with deprivation of the common table, with exclusion from the church and from the company of women." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men's. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"All plum'd like estridges, that with the wind; baited like eagles having lately bath'd; glittering in golden coats, like images; as full of spirit as the month of May, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, his cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, and vaulted with such ease into his seat, as if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, to turn and wind a fiery Pegasus. King Henry IV. Part I. Act iv. Sc. 1." - William Shakespeare

"Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time, Ere humane stature purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been performed Too terrible for the ear. The time has been That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end. But now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murder is. Macbeth (Macbeth at III, iv)" - William Shakespeare

"But to the purpose--for we cite our faults that they may hold excused our lawless lives; and partly, seeing you are beautified with goodly shape, and by your own report a linguist, and a man of such perfection as we do in our quality much want. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (First Outlaw at IV, i)" - William Shakespeare

"Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. Hamlet, Act v, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare

"Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business." - William Shakespeare

"I love my pizza so much in fact that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza almost an affair. Meanwhile Sofie is practically in tears over hers she's having a metaphysical crisis about it and she's begging me Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"She died--this was the way she died; and when her breath was done, took up her simple wardrobe and started for the sun. Her little figure at the gate the angels must have spied, since I could never find her upon the mortal side." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and to be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds." - Emma Goldman