Great Throughts Treasury

"Rabbi Eleazar ha-Kappar used to say: “Jealousy, lust, and ambition remove man from the world… They who have been born are destined to die. They that are dead are destined to be made alive. They who live are destined to be judged, that men may know and make known and understand that He is G-d, He is the maker, He is the creator, He is the discerner, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the complainant, and it is He who will in the future judge, blessed be He, in whose presence is neither guile nor forgetfulness nor respect of persons nor taking of bribes; for all is His. And know that everything is according to the reckoning. And let not your evil nature assure you that the grave will be your refuge: for despite yourself you were fashioned, and despite yourself you were born, and despite yourself you live, and despite yourself you die, and despite yourself shall you are destined to give account and reckoning before the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”" - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL

"Rabbi Eleazar ha-Kappar used to say: “Jealousy, lust, and ambition remove man from the world… They who have been born are destined to die. They that are dead are destined to be made alive. They who live are destined to be judged, that men may know and make known and understand that He is G-d, He is the maker, He is the creator, He is the discerner, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the complainant, and it is He who will in the future judge, blessed be He, in whose presence is neither guile nor forgetfulness nor respect of persons nor taking of bribes; for all is His. And know that everything is according to the reckoning. And let not your evil nature assure you that the grave will be your refuge: for despite yourself you were fashioned, and despite yourself you were born, and despite yourself you live, and despite yourself you die, and despite yourself shall you are destined to give account and reckoning before the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”" - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL

"It is not only to the poets therefore that we must issue orders requiring them to represent good character in their poems or not to write at all; we must issue similar orders to all artists and prevent them from portraying bad character, ill-discipline, meanness, or ugliness in painting, sculpture, architecture, or any work of art, and if they are unable to comply they must be forbidden to practice their art. We shall thus prevent our guardians being brought up among representations of what is evil, and so day by day and little by little, by feeding as it were in an unhealthy pasture, insensibly doing themselves grave psychological damage. Our artists and craftsmen must be capable of perceiving the real nature of what is beautiful, and then our young men, living as it were in a good climate, will benefit because all the works of art they see and hear influence them for good, like the breezes from some healthy country with what is rational and right." - Plato NULL

"The globalized organization of work, profiting from the extreme privation of developing peoples, often entails grave situations that mock the elementary demands of human dignity." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"There are two victims in every abortion: a dead baby and a dead conscience... There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws [laws which seek to legitimate abortion and euthanasia]; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organization, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies." - Pope Leo XIII, born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci NULL

"Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood. Is it possible then, with the help of psychoanalysis, to free ourselves altogether from illusions? History demonstrates that they sneak in everywhere, that every life is full of them-perhaps because the truth often would be unbearable. And yet for many people the truth is so essential that they must pay dearly for its loss with grave illness. On the path of analysis we try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth. This truth always causes much pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom-unless we content ourselves with already conceptualized, intellectual wisdom based on other people's painful experiences, for example that of Sigmund Freud. But then we shall remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"It may be considered indiscreet to open the doors of someone else’s house and rummage around in other people’s family histories. Since so many of us still have the tendency to idealize our parents, my undertaking may even be regarded as improper. And yet it is something that I think must be done, for the amazing knowledge that comes to light from behind those previously locked doors contributes substantially toward helping people rescue themselves from their dangerous sleep and all its grave consequences." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet." - Albert Einstein

"Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry. " - Albert Einstein

"[It is necessary to assign]... to economic activity itself its proper place as servant, not a master, of society. The burden of our civilisation is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is sill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by embittered disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the provision of the material means of existence, is fit to occupy. Like a hypochondriac who is so absorbed in the processes of his own digestion that he goes to his grave before he has begun to live, industrialised communities neglect the very objects for which it is worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with the means by which riches can be acquired." - R. H. Tawney, fully Richard Henry Tawney

"Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry." - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt

"At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"ERANNA TO SAPPHO - O You wild adept at throwing! Like a spear by other things, I'd lain there beside my next of kin. Your strain flung me far. To where's beyond my knowing. None can bring me back again. Sisters think upon me as they twine, and the house is full of warm relation. I alone am out of the design, and I tremble like a supplication; for the lovely goddess all creation bowers in legend lives this life of mine. SAPPHO TO ERANNA - With unrest I want to inundate you, want to brandish you, you vine-wreathed stave. Want, like death itself, to penetrate you and to pass you onwards like the grave to the All: to all these things that wait you." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was joy for someone else); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars-and it is not enough if one may think all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"When I think about little girls in the moment of turning into big girls (it is no slow timid development but something strangely sudden), I always have to imagine an ocean behind them, or a grave eternal plain, or something else you don't actually see with your eyes but can only sense, and that only in the deep and silent hours. Then I see the big girls as being exactly as big as I was used to the little childlike girls being small--and Heaven above knows why, that's just how I want to see them. There is a reason for everything. But the best things that happen, after all, are the ones which hide their deeper reason with both hands, whether out of modesty or because they don't want to be betrayed." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself." - Richard Chenevix, fully Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin

"Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?" - Richard Dawkins

"There is no particular reason to think that the human brain will go on swelling. In order for this to happen, large-brained individuals have to have more children than small-brained individuals. It isn't obvious that this is now happening. It must have happened during our ancestral past, otherwise our brains would not have grown as they did. It also must have been true, incidentally, that braininess in our ancestors was under genetic control. If it has not been, natural selection would have had nothing to work on, and the evolutionary growth of the brain would not have occured. For some reason, many people take grave political offence at the suggestion that some individuals are genetically cleverer than others." - Richard Dawkins

"Because of the realities of human nature, perfect peace is achieved in two places only: in the grave and at the typewriter." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"After the Dinner Party - You two sit at the table late, each, now and then, Twirling a near-empty wine glass to watch the last red Liquid blimb up the crystalline spin to the last moment when Centrifugality fails: with nothing now said. What is left to say when the last logs sag and wink? The dark outside is streaked with the casual snowflake Of winter’s demise, all guests long gone home, and you think Of others who never again can come to partake Of food, wine, laughter, and philosophy— Though tonight one guest has quoted a killing phrase we owe To a lost one whose grin, in eternal atrophy, Now in dark celebrates some last unworded jest none can know. Now a chair scrapes, sudden, on tiles, and one of you Moves soundless, as in hypnotic certainty, The length of table. Stands there a moment or two, Then sits, reaches out a hand, open and empty. How long it seems till a hand finds that hand there laid, While ash, still glowing, crumbles, and silence is such That the crumbling of ash is audible. Now naught’s left unsaid Of the old heart-concerns, the last, tonight, which Had been of the absent children, whose bright gaze Over-arches the future’s horizon, in the mist of your prayers, The last log is black, while ash beneath displays No last glow. You snuff candles. Soon the old stairs Will creak with your grave and synchronized tread as each mounts To a briefness of light, then true weight of darkness, and then That heart-dimness in which neither joy nor sorrow counts. Even so, one hand gropes out for another, again." - Robert Penn Warren

"Build me up like a tower on the heights of your sanctuary, And set me like a seal upon your heart. Make me drunk with the blood of the foe on the day of war And satisfy me with his flesh on the night of redemption. Place the cup of salvation upon my right hand That my tongue may give voice in joy to a song of love. For nearly a thousand years I have declared my sorrow With many tears and with fasting,—will You not answer me?" - Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah

"The Symphony - O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. "Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale? Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope: When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, All the mightier strings assembling Ranged them on the violins' side As when the bridegroom leads the bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? Look up the land, look down the land The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore: They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside leagues of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody. `Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), `In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? -- The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? "Swinehood hath no remedy" Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the Throne?" Hath God said so? But Trade saith "No:" And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go! There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. Move out, if you think you're underpaid. The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; Trade is trade."'" Thereat this passionate protesting Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: "And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be! Does business mean, `Die, you -- live, I?' Then `Trade is trade' but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly. If business is battle, name it so: War-crimes less will shame it so, And widows less will blame it so. Alas, for the poor to have some part In yon sweet living lands of Art, Makes problem not for head, but heart. Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." And then, as when from words that seem but rude We pass to silent pain that sits abrood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to gentle throbbing Of long chords change-marked with sobbing -- Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, -- These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent. I heard, when `"All for love"' the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, `Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.' Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice `Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: `"All men are neighbors,"' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside hills of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody! Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile. Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? And hast thou nothing but a head? I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, And into sudden silence fled, Like as a blush that while 'tis red Dies to a still, still white instead. Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet. "O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, "I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! -- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, `Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, `O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.' Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! Base love good women to base loving drives. If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives." There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn. "Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady. For God shall right thy grievous wrong, And man shall sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Lady. Where's he that craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet -- Blind to lips kiss-wise set -- Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer may revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Lady? Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, `We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see Men maids in purity,' Fair Lady? Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes -- The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Lady? Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Lady, I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might. Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Lady. I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee -- ah me! and pray To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Lady." Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away Into the thick of the melodious fray. And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled. "Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led! Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- `Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'" Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise bassoons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest. Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords most fit. Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest. To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true -- Love alone can do. And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying. And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word." - Sidney Lanier

"When your love contracts in anger, the atmosphere itself feels threatening. But when you're expansive, no matter what the weather, you're in an open, windy field with friends." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes." - Russian Proverbs

"Do not hate the sinner. We are, indeed, all laden with guilt. If for the sake of God you are moved to oppose him, weep over him. Why do you hate him? Hate his sins and pray for him." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"The man who chooses to consider God an avenger, presuming that in this manner he bears witness to His justice, accuses Him of being bereft of goodness. Far be it that vengeance could ever be found in that Fountain of love and Ocean brimming with goodness! The aim of His design is the correction of men; and if it were not that, we should be stripped of the honor of our free will. Perhaps He would not even heal us by reproof." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive." - Simon Wiesenthal

"It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump of greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream rippled across their way, with ferny over-grown banks, where the blue kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Fulfill your ministry with all the affection of your heart." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"I remember in the case of the first play I ever wrote (I write plays, too) the manager to whom I submitted it asked me at once, the moment he glanced at it “Where is the action of this laid?” “It is laid,” I answered, “in the main sewer of a great city.” “Good, good,” he said; “keep it there.”" - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens." - 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

"If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-services act effective to prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The men and women who have the right ideals... are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"We do not steady a ship by fixing the anchor on aught that is within the vessel. The anchorage must be without. And so of the soul, when resting, not on what it sees in itself, but on what it sees in the character of God, the certainty of His truth, the impossibility of His falsehood." - Thomas Chalmers

"All her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened, and things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her little wishes and ways will all be as nothing." - Thomas Hardy

"I have been looking for god for fifty years and I think if he had existed I should have discovered him" - Thomas Hardy

"Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not." - Thomas Hardy

"Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye." - Thomas Jefferson

"If one thinks about it logically, it seems as though death should be something to be afraid of only if we will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrible transformation. But that doesn't prevent many people from thinking that annihilation is one of the worst things that could happen to them." - Thomas Nagel

"Before The Rain - We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst. Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers. We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!" - Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" - William Blake

"When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. ‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies.’ ‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.’ ‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed.’ The little ones leapèd and shoutèd and laugh’d And all the hills echoèd." - William Blake

"Love and harmony combine, And around our souls entwine While thy branches mix with mine, And our roots together join. Joys upon our branches sit, Chirping loud and singing sweet; Like gentle streams beneath our feet Innocence and virtue meet. Thou the golden fruit dost bear, I am clad in flowers fair; Thy sweet boughs perfume the air, And the turtle buildeth there. There she sits and feeds her young’ Sweet I hear her mournful song; And thy lovely leaves among, There is love, I hear his tongue. There his 1 charming nest doth lay, There he sleeps the night away; There he sports along the day, And doth among our branches play. " - William Blake

"Songs of Innocence (Introduction) - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped; he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer:’ So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. ‘Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read.’ So he vanish’d from my sight, And I pluck’d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear." - William Blake

"Once a dream did weave a shade O’er my Angel-guarded bed, That an emmet lost its way Where on grass methought I lay. Troubled, ’wilder’d, and forlorn, Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangled spray, All heart-broke I heard her say: ‘O, my children! do they cry? Do they hear their father sigh? Now they look abroad to see: Now return and weep for me.’ Pitying, I dropp’d a tear; But I saw a glow-worm near, Who replied: ‘What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night? ‘I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round: Follow now the beetle’s hum; Little wanderer, hie thee home.’" - William Blake