Great Throughts Treasury

"The widest land doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine with pulses that beat double. What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Wall must get the weather stain before they grow the ivy." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits--so much help by so much reading. It is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth—‘tis then we get the right good from a book." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"When our two souls stand up erect and strong, face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, until the lengthening wings break into fire at either curvèd point, — what bitter wrong can the earth do to us, that we should not long be here contented?" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Yet here's eglantine, here's ivy!--take them as I used to do thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, and tell thy soul their roots are left in mine." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"You believe in God, for your part?--that He who makes can make good things from ill things, best from worst, as men plant tulips upon dunghills when they wish them finest." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"I do consider a multitude doth make rather discord and confusion than good counsel." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king—and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms—I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"I regret the unhappiness of princes who are slaves to forms and fettered by caution." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"I shall lend credit to nothing against my people which parents would not believe against their own children." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"If there were two princes in Christendom who had good will and courage, it would be very easy to reconcile the religious difficulties; there is only one Jesus Christ and one faith, and all the rest is a dispute over trifles." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves.... And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat; yet you never had, nor shall have any that will love you better." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Though I am not imperial, and though Elizabeth may not deserve it, the Queen of England will easily deserve to have an emperor's son to marry." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak ... you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"She says I shall now have one mouth the more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music, and drawing." - Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

"You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on His every act." - Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

"Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, and men grow better as the world grows old." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Unless our souls had root in soil divine we could not bear earth's overwhelming strife. The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine, convinces me of everlasting life." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Hence, goes on the professor, definitions of happiness are interesting. I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: One of the best (we are still on definitions of happiness) was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.' Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe." - Dorothy Parker

"If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you." - Dorothy Parker

"For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Man is so created that as to his internal he cannot die; for he is capable of believing in God, and thus of being conjoined to God by faith and love, and to be conjoined to God is to live to eternity." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Man knows that love is, but not what it is." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The Lord withdraws no one from their hell unless they see that they are in hell and wish to be led out." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"For the belief in God is merely the outcome of the belief in man. God is the apex of the pyramid, not the base. Man is the corner- stone; and from the true conception of man have the Jewish thinkers risen to the noblest conception of the Deity. Those are shallow who talk of their agnosticism and parade their atheism. No one is an agnostic and no one is an atheist, except he have neither pity for the weak nor charity for the erring; except he have no mercy for those who need its soothing balm." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

"In the common sense of the word, Judaism is not a religion, it is not a system of dogmas, of sacramental grace; it is not a bundle of rites and ceremonies; it is not a road to happiness in the hereafter; it is not a scheme of salvation from original sin; it does neither stand nor fall with our views as to the character of those books we call sacred, and as to their authorship. But it is a message to the world that righteousness must be its own reward, and is of that force which builds the world and shapes the courses of men." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

"In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary." - Emil M. Cioran

"We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves." - Emil M. Cioran

"You will suffer from everything, and to excess: the winds will seem gales; every touch a dagger; smiles, slaps; trifles, cataclysms. Waking may come to an end, but its light survives within you; one does not see in the dark with impunity, one does not gather its lessons without danger; there are eyes which can no longer learn anything from the sun, and souls afflicted by nights from which they will never recover." - Emil M. Cioran

"A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families." - Emile Zola

"Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you, the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours." - Emile Zola

"My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit." - Emile Zola

"Speculation, speculation!' she [Caroline Hamelin] mechanically repeated, struggling with her doubts. Ah! the idea of it fills my heart with disturbing anguish." - Emile Zola

"I can wade Grief -- Whole Pools of it -- I'm used to that -- But the least push of Joy Breaks up my feet -- And I tip -- drunken -- Let no Pebble -- smile -- 'Twas the New Liquor -- That was all!" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"The bustle in a house the morning after death is solemnest of industries enacted upon earth,-- the sweeping up the heart, and putting love away we shall not want to use again until eternity" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"They say that 'home is where the heart is.' I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"He might as well plant an oak in a flowerpot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven, for loving her, for needing her more than my own life, for belonging to her more than my own soul. Heathcliff, speaking of Catherine" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"You must forgive me, for I struggled only for you." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man." - Emma Goldman