Great Throughts Treasury

"We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them." - Wendell Berry

"Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free." - Walker Percy

"This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less." - Walker Percy

"The proletarian revolution is impossible without the sympathy and support of the overwhelming majority of the working people." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"After the cheers have died down and the stadium is empty, after the headlines have been written and after you are back in the quiet of your room and the championship ring has been placed on the dresser and all the pomp and fanfare has faded, the enduring things that are left are: the dedication to excellence, the dedication to victory, and the dedication to doing with our lives the very best we can to make the world a better place in which to live." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"For great things do not done (sic) just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"There is no natural need to be bad." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Skepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind." - Victor Hugo

"To rise at six, to sleep at ten, to sup at ten, to dine at six, make a man live for ten times ten. [Inscription in Hugo's dining room]" - Victor Hugo

"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"He arrived at ideas the slow way, never skating over the clear, hard ice of logic, nor soaring on the slipstreams of imagination, but slogging, plodding along on the heavy ground of existence." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"A year ago, we all were united in the joy over having broken free of totalitarianism. Today we all are made somewhat nervous by the burden of freedom. Our society is still in a state of shock. This shock could have been expected, but none of us expected it to be so profound. The old system collapsed, and a new one so far has not been built. Our social life is marked by a subliminal uncertainty over what kind of system we are going to build, how to build it, and whether we are able to build it at all." - Václav Havel

"Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served." - Václav Havel

"Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace." - Václav Havel

"Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul." - Tryon Edwards

"He that fears you present will hate you absent." - Turkish Proverbs

"The highway is always shorter than the unknown side roads." - Turkish Proverbs

"God made man of the dust of the earth and man makes a god of the dust of the earth" - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

"The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished." - Thucydides NULL

"The fate of those of their neighbors who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity." - Thucydides NULL

"A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for." - Thurgood Marshall

"A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail." - Tobias Smollett, fully Tobias George Smollett

"Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip? Some bloody passion shakes your very frame. These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, They do not point on me. Othello, Act v, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"And let their heirs (God, if thy will be so) Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!" - William Shakespeare

"By perfectible, it is not meant that he is capable of being brought to perfection. But the word seems sufficiently adapted to express the faculty of being continually made better and receiving perpetual improvement; and in this sense it is here to be understood. The term perfectible, thus explained, not only does not imply the capacity of being brought to perfection, but stands in express opposition to it. If we could arrive at perfection, there would be an end to our improvement. There is however one thing of great importance that it does imply: every perfection or excellence that human beings are competent to conceive, human beings, unless in cases that are palpably and unequivocally excluded by the structure of their frame, are competent to attain." - William Godwin

"Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!" - William Godwin

"Under this view of the subject then it appears that revolutions, instead of being truly beneficial to mankind, answer no other purpose than that of marring the salutary and uninterrupted progress which might be expected to attend upon political truth and social improvement. They disturb the harmony of intellectual nature. They propose to give us something for which we are not prepared, and which we cannot effectually use. They suspend the wholesome advancement of science, and confound the process of nature and reason." - William Godwin

"Voluntary action is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions." - William James

"One was there who left all his friends behind; who going inland ever more and more, and being left quite alone, at last did find a lonely valley sheltered from the wind, wherein, amidst an ancient cypress wood, a long-deserted ruined castle stood." - William Morris

"A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as when he respects a woman's softness." - Douglas William Jerrold

"The defects of the understanding, like those of the face, grow worse as we grow old." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The heart is forever making the head its fool." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The man who leaves a woman best pleased with herself is the one whom she will soonest wish to see." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Our army shall in solemn show attend this funeral, and then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see high order in this great solemnity." - William Shakespeare

"Over hill, over dale, thorough bush, thorough briar, over park, over pale, thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, swifter than the moon's sphere; and I serve the fairy queen, to dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be; in their gold coats, spots you see; those be rubies, fairy favours, in their freckles live our savours. I must go seek some dew-drops here, and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits, i'll be gone; my queen and all her elves come here anon! A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare

"The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness--Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"In every human being lie infinite possibilities, which must not be triggered in vain. Since it is terrible when the whole man resonates with so many echoes, none of which becomes a real voice." - Elias Canetti

"Iraq is the central battleground in the war on terror. The terrorists certainly know what is at stake, which is why they are pulling out all the stops to derail our efforts there. They know that a free and democratic Iraq is a serious blow to their interests." - Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

"I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really-in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato)." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Cold in the earth - and the deep snow piled above thee, / Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"So he'll never know how much love: not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself, than I own. I do not know that our souls are made, but they are equal, and Linton is as different from mine as a moonbeam is different from lightning, fire or ice." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell