Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Darkness

"Suddenly finding such a secret in the midst of one's happiness is like the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves." - Victor Hugo

"That a cat may change into a lion, prefects of police do not believe possible; this can happen, nonetheless." - Victor Hugo

"The book will kill the building!" - Victor Hugo

"The characteristic of men of genius of the first order is to produce each a distinctive model of man." - Victor Hugo

"The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both." - Victor Hugo

"Deeds done with a sense of righteousness do not give an opportunity for sin to breed and consequently inhibit the emergence of sin and evil." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"Knowledge increases his thinking capabilities and helps him in getting new and innovative ideas.After implementing those ideas successfully he earns wealth." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"It is all God, an expression of His Majesty. Derive joy from the springs of joy within you and without you; advance, do not stand still or recede." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"This story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed, I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them is false, and it is all one story." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"The diseases that devour soul escaped the body." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, compar'd with loss of thee, will not seem so. Sonnet 90" - William Shakespeare

"But to confound such time that drums him from his sport and speaks as loud as his own state and ours, 'tis to be chid as we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge, pawn their experience to the present pleasure and so rebel to judgment. Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene 4" - William Shakespeare

"Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous." - William Godwin

"Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendship and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will… and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia." - William James

"The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion." - William James

"The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds" - William James

"It is not his intent to live in such ways as, for aught we know, God may perhaps pardon, but to be diligent in such ways as we know that God will infallibly reward." - William Law

"Love is enough: draw near and behold me ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter, and are full of the hope of the dawn coming after; for the strong of the world have bought me and sold me and my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter. — pass by me, and hearken, and think of me not!" - William Morris

"Now is a time to storm, why art thou still?" - William Shakespeare

"O here will I set of my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world wearied flesh eyes look your last arms take your last embrace and lips all you the doors of breath seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death." - William Shakespeare

"Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend the highest heaven of invention!" - William Shakespeare

"Order gave each thing view." - William Shakespeare

"In regard to sensory objects, the functions of all four organs are simultaneous as well as successive. In respect to imperceptible things, the functioning of the three internal organs is preceded by that of the fourth (cognition)." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"So much for their looks; but their characters - that is a much more difficult matter. We all have our quirks and no one is ever all bad. Then again, it is not possible for everyone to be all things all of the time: attractive, restrained, intelligent, tasteful and trustworthy. We are all different and it is often difficult to know on which aspect to dwell." - Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

"His genius, it is true, was of a peculiar kind; the genius of character, of thought, and the objects of thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare class of men--rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons--who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future." - Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown

"That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

"The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"What use is it to slumber here: though the heart be sad and weary? What use is it to slumber here though the day rise dark and dreary?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"While in moral pain one can preserve an attitude of dignity and compunction , and consequently already be free; physical suffering in all its degrees entails the impossibility of detaching oneself from the instant of existence. It is the very irremissibility of being." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"The use of text messaging for propaganda purposes – known as “red-texting” – reveals another creative streak among China’s propaganda virtuosos. The practice may have grown out of a competition organized by one of China’s mobile phone operators to compose the most eloquent Party-admiring text message. Fast forward a few years, and senior telecom officials in Beijing are already busily attending “red-texting” symposia. “I really like these words of Chairman Mao: ‘The world is ours, we should unite for achievements. Responsibility and seriousness can conquer the world and the Chinese Communist Party members represent these qualities.’ These words are incisive and inspirational.” This is a text message that thirteen million mobile phone users in the Chinese city of Chongqing received one day in April 2009. Sent by Bo Xilai, the aggressive secretary of the city’s Communist Party who is speculated to have strong ambitions for a future in national politics, the messages were then forwarded another sixteen millions times. Not so bad for an odd quote from a long-dead Communist dictator." - Evgeny Morozov

"The task of educating and feeding youngsters, the task of educating the army, the task of distributing the lands of the former absentee landlords to those who laboured every day upon that same land without receiving its benefits, are accomplishments of social medicine." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority)." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant — the greatest in history — will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948--on a five year old girl." -

"Surely the preservation and enjoyment of the freedoms vouchsafed to us by the Constitution of the United States will require eternal vigilance even to the guarding of it with our lives… We must ever be on our guard against the unsound theories that would strike at our Constitutional freedoms. We must ever keep faith with our founding fathers by keeping faith with our Constitution. I trust that we all have faith in the Constitution of the United States, and that that faith is born of an assurance that this great document came into being through the inspiration of God to wise men, embodying as it does, eternal principles. This nation has a spiritual foundation which must be preserved at any cost of sweat and blood. May we recognize our debt and responsibility and be ever vigilant. The need for this eternal and constant vigilance is seen in some prophetic words of Daniel Webster, given in 1802: “Next to correct morals and watchful guardianship over the Constitution is the proper means for its support. No human advantage is indefensible. The fairest productions of man have in themselves or receive from accident a tendency to decay. Unless the Constitution be constantly fostered on the principles which created it, its excellency will fade; and it will feel, even in its infancy, the weakness and decrepitude of age. “Our form of government is superior to all others, inasmuch as it provides, in a fair and honorable manner for its own amendment. But it requires no gift or prophecy to foresee that this privilege may be seized on by demagogues, to introduce wild and destructive innovations. Under the gentle name of amendments, changes may be proposed which, if unresisted, will undermine the national compact, mar its fairest features, and reduce it finally to a dead letter. It abates nothing of the danger to say that alterations may be trifling and inconsiderable. If the Constitution be picked away by piecemeal, it is gone — and gone as effectually as if some military despot had grasped it at once, trampled it beneath his feet, and scattered its loose leaves in the wild winds.” If we are to keep faith with our Constitution, we must know it. Since it is the basis of our American way of life and our liberties every American should be familiar with it. We should read it periodically. How can people who are ignorant of the principles and guarantees of American government stand up in defense of it and our rights under the Constitution? The fundamentals and processes of free government should be known to every school boy — and his parents. No free people can ever survive if they are ignorant of and fail to understand the principles of free government!" - Ezra Taft Benson

"Most of us forget to take time for wonder, praise and gratitude until it is almost too late. Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large; it is a God-ward going." - Faith Baldwin

"I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfill the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence. We live in order to finish an, as yet, unfinished universe, unfinished so far as the human, that is, the highest part of it, is concerned. We live in order to develop the superior qualities of man which are, as yet, for the most part latent." - Felix Adler

"The ethical element of religion has ever been its truly vital and quickening force. It is this which lends such majesty to the speeches of the Prophets, which gives such ineffable power and sweetness to the words of Jesus. Has this ethical element become less important in our age? Has the need of accentuating it become less imperative?" - Felix Adler

"One discovery after another has shown that what was previously taken as inert matter is in reality a center of intense activity." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane