Great Throughts Treasury

"I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people." - Richard Avedon

"All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it." - Robertson Davies

"It never yet happened to any man since the beginning of the world, nor ever will, to have all things according to his desire, or to whom fortune was never opposite and adverse." - Robert Burton

"My conscience is my crown, Contented thoughts my rest; My heart is happy in itself, My bliss is in my breast... Enough I reckon wealth; A mean the surest lot, That lies too high for base contempt, Too low for envy's shot... I feel no care of coin, Well-doing is my wealth; My mind to me an empire is, While grace affordeth health... rise by others' fall I deem a losing gain; All states with others' ruins built To ruin run amain... Fortune smiles, I smile to think How quickly she will frown." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell

"Times go by Turns - THE loppèd tree in time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower; Times go by turns and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow, She draws her favours to the lowest ebb; Her tides hath equal times to come and go, Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; 10 No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in fine amend. Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring, No endless night yet not eternal day; The saddest birds a season find to sing, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay: Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all, That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall. A chance may win that by mischance was lost; The net that holds no great, takes little fish; In some things all, in all things none are crost, Few all they need, but none have all they wish; Unmeddled joys here to no man befall: Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell

"Literary - Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! A farewell, and then forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him? Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me, Dark despair around benights me. " - Robert Burns, aka Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard

"Let not one look of Fortune cast you down; she were not Fortune if she did not frown." - Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Baron Broghill

"How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people." - Richard Avedon

"I hate cameras. They interfere; they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter. " - Richard Avedon

"I before Thy greatness Stand, and am afraid:— All my secret thoughts Thine eye beholdeth Deep within my bosom laid." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"I can reveal to you that I wished to die - For with much weeping she left me Saying: "Sappho - what suffering is ours! For it is against my will that I leave you." In answer, I said: "Go, happily remembering me For you know what we shared and pursued - If not, I wish you to see again our [former joys]... The many braids of rose and violet you [wreathed] Around yourself at my side And the many garlands of flowers With which you adorned your soft neck: With royal oils from [fresh flowers] You anointed [ yourself ] And on soft beds fulfilled your longing [For me] " - Sappho NULL

"I shall drink with joy the cup of sorrow because my Beloved is the cup-bearer." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"Before you act consider; when you have considered, tis fully time to act." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"But few prize honor more than money." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"A wise man is never surprised." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Brave men ought not to be cast down by adversity." - Silius Italicus, fully Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus

"He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence." - Simone Weil

"[Anselm’s Proof God exists] God exists in our understanding… This means that the concept of God resides as an idea in our minds… God is a possible being, and might exist in reality. He is possible because the concept of God does not bear internal contradictions… If something exists exclusively in our understanding and might have existed in reality then it might have been greater… This simply means that something that exists in reality is perfect (or great)… Something that is only a concept in our minds could be greater by actually existing. Suppose (theoretically) that God only exists in our understanding and not in reality. If this were true, then it would be possible for God to be greater then he is… This would mean that God is a being in which a greater is possible. This is absurd because God, a being in which none greater is possible, is a being in which a greater is possible… Herein lies the contradiction… Thus it follows that it is false for God to only exist in our understanding. Hence God exists in reality as well as our understanding." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

"In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"If texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble, not pretty little trifles included only for aesthetic or commercial value. Primates are visual animals, and (particularly in science) illustration has a language and set of conventions all its own." - Stephan Jay Gould

"When Bonner writes that natural selection for optimal feeding is then presumed to be the cause of non-motility in all forms, I can't help suspecting that some plants might do even better if they could walk from shade to sun—but the inherited constraints of design never permitted a trial of this intriguing option." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The cosmos, they hold, comes into being when its substance (ousia) has first been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes on increasingly till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their mixture. [Diogenes]" - Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL

"A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [...] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is...that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no, look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept three score and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it." - Thomas Dekker

"Every man calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good; and that evil which displeaseth him." - Thomas Hobbes

"Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied." - Thomas Hughes

"Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected – these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us." - Thomas Jefferson

"I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law." - Thomas Jefferson

"If treasury bills are emitted on a tax appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of six per cent, there is no one who would not take them in preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and loans would reduce them in time." - Thomas Jefferson

"There is a fullness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance." - Thomas Jefferson

"In time the savage bull sustains the yoke, iIn time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure, in time small wedges cleave the hardest oak, in time the flint is pierced with softest shower." - Thomas Kyd

"America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice." - Thomas Paine

"Mad Song - The wild winds weep, And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs unfold: But lo! the morning peeps 5 Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling beds of dawn The earth do scorn. Lo! to the vault Of pavèd heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven: They strike the ear of night, Make weep the eyes of day; They make mad the roaring winds, And with tempests play. Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain." - William Blake

"Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre." - Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer

"The Gods of the earth and sea sought through nature to find this tree. But their search was all in vain: there grows one in the human brain." - William Blake

"If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies. . . . It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it." - William Cowper

"To be sure, the Bishop was a little theatrical in his humility, as he had been in his grandeur; but that was his way, Auclair reflected, and, after all, nobody can help his way. If a man admits his mistakes, that is a great deal..." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Do good because of tomorrow. - Ghanaian Proverb" -

"A peasant who is unburdened by debt and has an adequate holding is the freest and most independent man among us; neither food problems nor the threat of unemployment need worry him and the subjection to the moods of nature which he exchanges for that of the market and the business cycle, usually ennobles a man instead of embittering him. His life, from whatever angle we view it, is the most satisfying, the richest and the most complete in terms of human needs." - Wilhelm Röepke

"I say there are no principles but those of the mind, and nothing exists apart from the mind." - Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an

"Berkshire Hathaway will sell you insurance, carpeting or any of our other products in exchange for options identical to those you grant yourselves." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"We'd go down and play the best team. It would be fun for me and Bill to play the champions. And it might spur them on some." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous. ...So we use lots of things daily that are dangerous, but we generally pay some attention to how they're used. We tell the cars how fast they can go." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"In a national capital Mirabeau and his set attacked mystery ; the packed galleries roared and history marched to the drums of a clear idea, the aim of the Rational City, quick to admire, quick to tire." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden