Great Throughts Treasury

"Infinite riches are all around you if you will open your mental eyes and behold the treasure house of infinity within you. There is a gold mine within you from which you can extract everything you need to live life gloriously, joyously, and abundantly." - Joseph Murphy

"Of all created things the source is one, Simple, single as love remember The cell and seed of life, the sphere That is, of child, white bird, and small blue dragon-fly Green fern, and the gold four-petalled tormentilla The ultimate memory. Each latent cell puts out a future, Unfolds its differing complexity As a tree puts forth leaves, and spins a fate Fern-traced, bird feathered, or fish-scaled." - Kathleen Raine

"Those who have conquered themselves...live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame...To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same...Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

"It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"And yet it is hard to believe that anything in nature could stand revealed as solid matter. The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses, like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire; red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam; hard gold is softened and melted down by heat; chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid; heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold; by custom raising the cup, we feel them both as water is poured in, drop by drop, above." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

"There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland." - Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery

"Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces." - Jean-Paul Marat

"At the funeral, Lewis placed his 1984 gold medal from the 100 meters in his father's hand before the casket was closed." - Mary Lou Retton

"The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force." - Michael Parenti

"I do believe that every individual should be free to own, buy, and sell gold. If under those circumstances a private gold standard emerged, fine—although I make a scientific prediction that it’s very unlikely. But I think those people who say they believe in a gold standard are fundamentally being very anti-libertarian because what they mean by a gold standard is a governmentally fixed price for gold." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"More gold had been mined from the mind of men than the earth itself. " - Napoleon Hill

"The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and the joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch, by which we may behold his works." - Nicolas Caussin

"The papers, which thirty years ago conferred upon me the honor of American citizenship, are always kept in a safe, while my orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other distinctions are packed away in old trunks." - Nikola Tesla

"Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong. Gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes, and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battlefields of earth. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc. " - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture it amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth. " - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time." - Persian Proverbs

"The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft." - Philip Wylie, fully Philip Gordon Wylie

"If all were rich, gold would be penniless." - Philip James Bailey

"As gold is tried by the furnace, and the baser metal shown, so the hollow-hearted friend is known by adversity. " - Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi

"Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that "It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece."" - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"The decoration and enlargement of the heart are the direct end of truth, and, without this result, knowledge is not power, but is treasure buried and forgotten like the fabled gold of Capt. Kidd by some unknown sea." - David Swing, aka Professor Swing

"By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint. " - Propertius, fully Sextus Propertius NULL

"Crates threw his gold into the sea, saying, "I will destroy thee, lest thou destroy me." If men do not put the love of the world to death, the love of the world will put them to death." - Ralph Venning

"Man is nobler for his knowledge than for the gold and goods he possesses, even though these be gained with great good will." - Ramon Llul, aka Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull, Raimundus, Raymundus Lullus or Lullius

"The painter should not become conscious of his insights without taking the way round through his mental processes. His advances, enigmatic even to himself, must enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them at the moment of transition. For him, alas, who watches for them, delays them... they change like the fine gold in the fairy tale which can no longer remain gold because some detail went wrong." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"Iron, after it is converted into gold by the touch of philosopher's stone, may be kept under the ground or thrown into a rubbish heap; it will always remain gold and will not return to its former condition. Similar is the state of the man whose soul has touched, even once, the feet of the Almighty Lord. Whether he dwells in the bustle of the world, or in the solitude of the forest, nothing ever contaminates him." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"Leroy bet me I couldn't find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough." - Rita Mae Brown

"Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise." - Robertson Davies

"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay." - Robert Frost

"Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay." - Robert Frost

"The Trial By Existence - Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified." - Robert Frost

"Nature does not complete things. She is chaotic. Man must finish, and he does so by making a garden and building a wall. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing Gold can stay. " - Robert Frost

"There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting so much as just finding the gold. It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace." - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"I just think that dreams are best, Just to sit and fancy things; Give your gold no acid test, Try not how your silver rings; Fancy women pure and good, Fancy men upright and true: Fortressed in your solitude, Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all; Truth's a minion of the mind; Love's ideal comes at call; As ye seek so shall ye find. But ye must not seek too far; Things are never what they seem: Let a star be just a star, And a woman -- just a dream. O you Dreamers, proud and pure, You have gleaned the sweet of life! Golden truths that shall endure Over pain and doubt and strife. I would rather be a fool Living in my Paradise, Than the leader of a school, Sadly sane and weary wise. O you Cynics with your sneers, Fallen brains and hearts of brass, Tweak me by my foolish ears, Write me down a simple ass! I'll believe the real "you" Is the "you" without a taint; I'll believe each woman too, But a slightly damaged saint. Yes, I'll smoke my cigarette, Vestured in my garb of dreams, And I'll borrow no regret; All is gold that golden gleams. So I'll charm my solitude With the faith that Life is blest, Brave and noble, bright and good," - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"Strayed in mid-youth, rouse up, nor sleep, for lo! The days of youth like clouds of smoke will pass. Ere evening falls, thou shalt be withered grass, Though morning saw thee like a lily blow. Why waste on ancestors a heated breath, Or note which progeny was Abraham’s? Whether his food be herbs or Bashan rams, Man, wretched wight, is on his way to death." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"May this my prayer aid mankind The path of right and worth to find; The living God, His wondrous ways, Herein inspire my song of praise. Nor is the theme at undue length set down, Of all my hymns behold "The Royal Crown. Wonderful are thy works, as my soul overwhelmingly knoweth. Thine, O Lord, are the greatness and the might, the beauty, the triumph, and the splendour. Thine, O Lord, is the Kingdom, and Thou art exalted as head over all. Thine are all riches and honour: Thine the creatures of the heights and depths. They bear witness that they perish, while Thou endurest. Thine is the might in whose mystery our thoughts can find no stay, so far art Thou beyond us. In Thee is the veiled retreat of power, the secret and the foundation. p. 83 Thine is the name concealed from the sages, The force that sustaineth the world on naught, And that can bring to light every hidden thing. Thine is the loving-kindness that ruleth over all Thy creatures, And the good treasured up for those who fear Thee. Thine are the mysteries that transcend understanding and thought. Thine is the life over which extinction holdeth no sway, And Thy throne is exalted above every sovereignty, And Thy habitation hidden in the shrouded height. Thine is the existence from the shadow of whose light every being was created, Of which we say, in His shadow we live. Thine are the two worlds between which Thou hast set a boundary, The first for deeds and the second for reward. Thine is the reward which Thou for the righteous hast stored up and hidden, Yea, Thou sawest it was goodly and didst hide it." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Who shall descend as deep as Thy thoughts? For from the splendour of the sphere of Intelligence Thou hast wrought the radiance of souls, And the high angels that are the messengers of Thy will, The ministers of Thy presence, Majestic of power and great in the Kingdom of heaven, "In their hand the flaming sword that turneth every way," Performing their work whithersoever the spirit wafteth them, All of them shapen to comeliness, shimmering as pearls, Transcendent creatures, Angels of the outer courts, or angels of the Presence, Watching Thy movements. From a holy place are they come, And from the fount of light are they drawn. They are divided into companies, And on their banner are signs graven of the pen of the swift scribe. There are superior and attendant bands, And hosts running and returning, But never weary and never faint, Seeing but invisible. And there are some wrought of flame, And some are wafted air, And some compounded of fire and of water, And there are Seraphim in burning rows, And wingèd lightnings and darting arrows of fire, And each troop of them all bows itself down "To Him who rideth the highest heavens." And in the supreme sphere of the universe they stand in thousands and tens of thousands, Divided into watches, That change daily and nightly at the beginning of their vigils, For the ritual of psalms and songs, "To Him who is girt with omnipotence." All of them with dread and trembling bow and prostrate themselves to Thee, Saying: To Thee we acknowledge That Thou art He, the Lord our God; Thou hast made us, and not we ourselves, And the work of Thy hands are we all. For Thou art our Lord, and we are Thy servants, Thou art our Creator, and we are Thy witnesses." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"And he is Omnipresent. There is only one Religion The Religion of love. There is only one caste. The caste of humanity. There is only one language. The language of the heart. There is only one law The law of Karma (duty). There is only one God One Goal, One Truth, One Religion, One Reason. There is only one Guru. He is God. And that Guru is without you. " - Sathya Sai Baba, fully Sri Sathya Sai Baba

"Your worth can be estimated by what you seek. If you seek a dog, your worth is that of a dog. Whoever worship God because he desires heaven is a slave of his own desire. Whoever worships Him out of fear of hell is a slave of hell, for anyone who is afraid of something is a slave of that thing." - Sharafuddin Ahmad ibn Yahya Maneri, fully Hazrat Makhdum Shaikh Sharafuddin Yahya Maneri

"For me to praise is interrupting praise. Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"This divine love, beckons us to a world beyond only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"When soul rises into lips you feel the kiss you have wanted." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"You soak up my soul and mingle me. Each drop of my blood cries out to the earth. We are partners, blended as one." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL