Great Throughts Treasury

"Do not lose your inward peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed again to enter the Church, be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"It is of great importance, when we begin to practice prayer, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it," - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself." - Sam Levenson

"Perhaps the day will come when all the things bestowed upon mankind for its benefit and liberation will become corrupted into their very antithesis. Mankind, instead of assuring its members their legitimate rights of development ... will serve them the tear-drenched bread of slaves and the worm-wood of bitterness.... At such time, science, too, will become solely destructive ... will frantically blind itself with its own brightness ....Mankind will vainly exhaust its strength in a blind upsurge of uncurbed desires." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning." - Samuel Butler

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have." - Samuel Butler

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Life's desires should never be directed toward sense gratification. One should desire only a healthy life, or self-preservation, since a human being is meant for inquiry about the Absolute Truth. Nothing else should be the goal of one's works." - Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

"That complete freedom is achieved when he meets the complete spirit, the Personality of Godhead. There is a dormant affection for God within everyone; spiritual existence is manifested through the gross body and mind in the form of perverted affection for gross and subtle matter." - Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers." - Sydney J. Harris

"A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique." - Simone Weil

"Because nothing is true except by participating in truth; and so, the truth of something true is in that true thing. But the thing stated is not in the true statement, and thus must not be called its truth; rather, it must be called the cause of the statement's truth. Therefore, it seems to me that the truth of the statement must be sought only in the statement itself.." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

"He pitilessly punishes himself, and, in his heart, performs the same cruel office which Divine Justice reserves for the chastisement of the greatest criminal." - Cyprian, aka Saint Cyprian of Carthage, fully Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus NULL

"God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new[...] It is your arms, Jesus, which are the lift to carry me to heaven, And so there is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must stay little and become less and less." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"Just as a torrent sweeps along with it unto the depths of the sea whatsoever it encounters on its course, even so, my Jesus, does the soul which plunges into the boundless ocean of Thy Love draw after her all her treasures. Lord, Thou knowest that for me these treasures are the souls it has pleased Thee to unite to mine." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"And therefore, first in the holy Synod of Nicaea, the gathering of the three hundred and eighteen chosen men, united by the Holy Ghost, as far as in him lay, he [St. Athanasius] stayed the disease. Though not yet ranked among the Bishops, he held the first rank among the members of the Council, for preference was given to virtue just as much as to office" - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness. So the best way seems to be to scourge oneself with thin cords which hurt superficially, rather than to use some other means which might produce serious internal injury." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"He who really keeps account of his actions considers as lost every day in which he does not mourn, whatever good he may have done in it." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"Prayer is by its very nature a dialogue and a union with God. Its effect is to hold the world together and to achieve reconciliation with God." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"Power without responsibility -- the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages." - Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

"When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God." - Stephen Charnock

"Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world, so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

"When I see a man in a state of anxiety, I say, “What can this man want? If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he still be anxious?” [Epictetus]" - Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL

"The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"I'm cold. I'm cold all over. Rub me in father and mother. Fear was my father, Father Fear. His look drained the stones." - Theodore Roethke

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade... Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire." - Theodore Roethke

"The worst of all fears is the fear of living." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The Officious man is one who will rise and promise things beyond his power; and who, when an arrangement is admitted to be just, will oppose it, and be refuted." - Theophrastus NULL

"Genius . . . means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble." - Thomas Carlyle

"That balancing moment at which pleasure would allure, and conscience is urging us to refrain, may be regarded as the point of departure or divergency whence one or other of the two processes (towards evil, or towards good) take their commencement. Each of them consists in a particular succession of ideas, with their attendant feelings; and whichever of them may happen to be described once has, by the law of suggestion, the greater chance, in the same circumstances, of being described over again. Should the mind dwell on an object of allurement, and the considerations of principle not be entertained, it will pass inward from the first incitement to the final and guilty indulgence by a series of stepping-stones, each of which will present itself more readily in future, and with less chance of arrest or interruption by the suggestions of conscience than before." - Thomas Chalmers

"And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." - Thomas Jefferson

"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy." - Thomas Jefferson

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

"Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage." - Thomas Merton

"He hath learning enough that has learned to drink to his first man." - Thomas Nashe

"With that she sprung full lightlie to my lips, and fast about the neck me colle's and clips. She wanton faint's, and fall's upon hir bed and often tosseth too and fro hir head. She shutts hir eyes, and waggles with hir tongue: Oh, who is able to abstaine so long?" - Thomas Nashe

"Amid so much war and contest and variety of opinion, you will find one consenting conviction in every land, that there is one God, the King and Father of all." - Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL