Great Throughts Treasury

"It seems to me that the best way will be the one that is most gentle and forbearing, which is more in conformity with the Spirit of Our Lord and more apt to win hearts." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"May the Holy Spirit pour forth into your hearts the lights of which you stand in need that a great fervor may be enkindled in them, that you may be faithful to, and in love with, the practice of all those virtues so that you may, for the glory of God, esteem your vocation at its true value, and love it in such a way that you may persevere therein for the remainder of your life, serving the poor in a spirit of humility, obedience, suffering and charity and may you be ever blessed." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"Our Lord is pleased to deprive us of temporal goods; may it please His Divine Goodness to give us spiritual ones!" - Saint Vincent de Paul

"We must be firm but not rough in our guidance and avoid an insipid kind of meekness, which is ineffective. We will learn from Our Lord how our meekness should always be accompanied by humility and grace so as to attract hearts to Him and not cause anyone to turn away from Him." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"We must be full reservoirs in order to let our water spill out without becoming empty, and we must possess the spirit with which we want them to be animated, for no one can give what he does not have." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them." - Samuel Butler

"Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one." - Samuel Butler

"Pleasures are not, if they last; in their passing is their best: glory is more bright and gay in a flash, and so away." - Samuel Daniel

"I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy." - Samuel Richardson

"Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified, cross is a fruitful tree." - Samuel Rutherford

"The Self-luminous Lord, who is fire, who is in water, who has entered into the whole world, who is in plants, who is in trees-to that Lord let there be adoration! Yea, let there be adoration!" - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"Two birds, united always and known by the same name, closely cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit; the other looks on without eating." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry problems, all clumsiness of style, and all faulty connection of ideas in compositions and essays, all such things are due to the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily, and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the truth." - Simone Weil

"Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality." - Simone Weil

"We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits—and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful." - Simone Weil

"We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise." - Simone Weil

"God by nature is uncompounded, joined to nothing, composed of nothing, to whom nothing happens by accident; but only possessing in His own nature that which is divine, enclosing all things, Himself closed out of nothing, penetrating all things, Himself never penetrable, everywhere complete, everywhere present at the same time, whether in heaven or on earth or in the depths of the sea, incapable of being seen or measured by our senses, to be followed only by faith and venerated in our religion." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"The Church is one, and as she is one, cannot be both within and without. For if she is with [the heretic] Novatian, she was not with [Pope] Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius, who succeeded the bishop [of Rome], Fabian, by lawful ordination, and whom, beside the honor of the priesthood the Lord glorified also with martyrdom, Novatian is not in the Church; nor can he be reckoned as a bishop, who, succeeding to no one, and despising the evangelical and apostolic tradition, sprang from himself." - Cyprian, aka Saint Cyprian of Carthage, fully Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus NULL

"Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear." - Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL

"God's love is revealed just as much in the most simple soul who does not resist His graces as in the most sublime." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"Whatever, my God, I burn in hell for all eternity, if it is your will." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"But in the case of man, hard as it is for him to learn how to submit to rule, it seems far harder to know how to rule over men, and hardest of all, with this rule of ours, which leads them by the divine law, and to God, for its risk is, in the eyes of a thoughtful man, proportionate to its height and dignity. For, first of all, he must, like silver or gold, though in general circulation in all kinds of seasons and affairs, never ring false or alloyed, or give token of any inferior matter, needing further refinement in the fire; or else, the wider his rule, the greater evil he will be. Since the injury which extends to many is greater than that which is confined to a single individual… nothing is so easy as to become evil, even without any one to lead us on to it; while the attainment of virtue is rare and difficult, even where there is much to attract and encourage us." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"As a result, we ought to appreciate and use these gifts of God insofar as they help us toward our goal of loving service and union with God. But insofar as any created things hinder our progress toward our goal, we ought to let them go." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"Give me only your love and your grace. With this I am rich enough, and I have no more to ask." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"God's way in dealing with those whom He intends to admit soonest after this life into the possession of His everlasting glory, is to purify them in this world by the greatest afflictions and trials." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"How to correct others depends on knowledge and discernment of character." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"Often remind yourself that God is with you." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"The miracles of God’s Providence take place every day." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"You can perform miracles by touching the hearts of those entrusted to your care." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty." - Stephan Jay Gould

"We talk about the ‘march from monad to man’ (old-style language again) as though evolution followed continuous pathways to progress along unbroken lineages. Nothing could be further from reality. I do not deny that, through time, the most ‘advanced’ organism has tended to increase in complexity. But the sequence [allocated in most texts] from jellyfish to trilobite to nautiloid to armored fish to dinosaur to monkey to human is no lineage at all, but a chronological set of termini on unrelated evolutionary trunks. Moreover life shows no trend to complexity in the usual sense — only an asymmetrical expansion of diversity around a starting point constrained to be simple." - Stephan Jay Gould

"As to private worship, let us lay hold of the most melting opportunities and frames. When we find our hearts in a more than ordinary spiritual frame, let us look upon it as a call from God to attend him; such impressions and notions are God’s voice, inviting us into communion with him in some particular act of worship, and promising us some success in it. When the Psalmist had a secret motion to “seek God’s face” and complied with it, the issue is the encouragement of his heart, which breaks out into an exhortation to others to be of good courage, and wait on the Lord: “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.” One blow will do more on the iron when it is hot, than a hundred when it is cold; melted metals may be stamped with any impression; but, once hardened, will with difficulty be brought into the figure we intend." - Stephen Charnock

"Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all the reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them. They published this doctrine in Jerusalem, and quickly spread it over the greatest part of the world, folly outwitted wisdom, and weakness overpowered strength. The conquest of the East by Alexander was not so admirable as the enterprise of these poor men." - Stephen Charnock

"Nothing can act before it will be. The first man was not, and therefore could not make himself to be. For anything to produce itself is to act; if it acted before it was, it was then something and nothing at the same time; it then had a being before it had a being; it acted when it brought itself into being. How could it act without a being, without it was? So that if it were the cause of itself, it must be before itself as well as after itself; it was before it was; it was as a cause before it was as an effect." - Stephen Charnock

"Terrified consciences, that are Magor-missabib, see nothing but matter of fear round about. As they have lived without the bounds of the law, they are afraid to fall under the stroke of his justice: fear wishes the destruction of that which it apprehends hurtful: it considers him as a God to whom vengeance belongs, as the Judge of all the earth. The less hopes such an one hath of his pardon, the more joy he would have to hear that his judge should he stripped of his life: he would entertain with delight any reasons that might support him in the conceit that there were no God: in his present state such a doctrine would be his security from an account: he would as much rejoice if there were no God to inflame an hell for him, as any guilty malefactor would if there were no judge to order a gibbet for him." - Stephen Charnock

"A curse on every wish that blurs the sight, paralyzes the tongue, cramps the hand, and prevents the truth being seen, said, and written." - Theodor Haecker

"The Americans of the age were not an irreligious people; and the fact that they were Christian was very important, for the marks of Christianity lay all across the Constitution." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

"We are spiritually dead without the Spirit indwelling, and spiritually asleep without the Spirit influencing....The former, praying, is like a ghost walking and talking; the latter, like a man speaking through his sleep." - Thomas Boston

"It is not the bee's touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest." - Thomas Brooks

"It was a choice saying of Augustine, 'Every saint is God's temple, and he who carries his temple about him, may go to prayer when he pleaseth'." - Thomas Brooks

"One of Satan's devices to keep poor souls in a sad, doubting, and questioning condition is causing them to be always posing and musing upon sin; to mind their sins more than their Saviour: yea, so to mind their sins as to forget and neglect their Saviour. Their eyes are so fixed upon their disease that they cannot see their remedy, though it be near; and they do so muse upon their debts that they have neither mind nor heart to think of their surety." - Thomas Brooks

"There is nothing in the world that renders a man more unlike to a saint, and more like to Satan - than to argue from God's mercy to sinful liberty; from divine goodness to licentiousness." - Thomas Brooks

"It seems to me a great truth that human things cannot stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, economies and law courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin." - Thomas Carlyle

"No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer, No effects." - Thomas Carlyle

"I bless God for cities.—They have been as lamps of life along the pathways of humanity and religion.—Within them, science has given birth to her noblest discoveries.—Behind their walls, freedom has fought her noblest battles.—They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression.—Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty.—They have been the active sentries of almost all Church and state reformation." - Thomas Guthrie

"All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights." - Thomas Jefferson

"Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak." - Thomas Jefferson

"The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself." - Thomas Jefferson

"God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief… than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life He listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it." - Thomas Merton

"I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of the bed in the middle of the night because it is imperative that I hear the silence of the night, alone, and, with my face on the floor, say psalms, alone, in the silence of the night... the silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world." - Thomas Merton