Great Throughts Treasury

"Love is represented as the fulfilling of the law, a creature’s perfection. All other graces, all divine dispensations contribute to this, and are lost in it as in a heaven. It expels the dross of our nature; it overcomes sorrow; it is the full joy of our Lord." - Richard Hooker

"You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home - home to a Father’s house - to an eternal home?" -

"Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Hope is the virgin of the ideal world, who opens heaven to us in the midst of every tempest." - Arsène Houssaye

"Man reconciles himself to almost any event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling; for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of heaven." -

"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay - in solid cash - the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"It is because we don't know who we are, because we are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that we behave in the generally silly, the often insane, the sometimes criminal ways that are so characteristically human. We are saved, we are liberated and enlightened, by perceiving the hitherto unperceived good that is already within us, by returning to our eternal Ground and remaining where, without knowing it, we have always been." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"Words are daughters of earth, but ideas are sons of heaven." -

"Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness. Carry a vision of heaven in your heart, and make the world correspond to that vision." -

"I know that there is one God in heaven, the Father of all humanity, and heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky, which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in God, and unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom. Whatever it is broken, wherever a shadow is cast upon the sunny rays of the sun of liberty, there is always danger of free principles everywhere in the world." - Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

"Bounded in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who has a recollection of heaven." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

"No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. Of all sound of bells (bells the music highest bordering upon heaven), most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the old year. I never heard it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelve-month. All I have done or suffered, performed or neglected - in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical flight of a contemporary, when he exclaimed: “I saw the skirts of the departing year.” It is no more than what is sober sadness, every one of us seems to be conscious of in that awful leave-taking." - Charles Lamb

"Music is God’s best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation." - Charles W. Landon

"A man may know the world without leaving his own home. From his windows he can see the supreme heaven, and the farther he goes afield the less likely he is to find it." -

"Heaven has no favourites; it always aids the good man." -

"It is the Way of Heaven to take from those who have too much, and give to those who have too little. By the way of man is not so. He takes away from those who have too little, to add to his own superabundance." -

"Without going out of doors, one may know the whole world, without looking out the window, one may see the way of heaven. The further one travels, the less one may know. Thus it is that without moving you shall know, without looking you shall see, without doing you shall achieve." -

"Never did poesy appear so full of heaven to me as when I saw how it pierced through pride and fear to the lives of coarsest men." - James Russell Lowell

"As great edifices collapse of their own weight, so Heaven sets a similar limit to the growth of prosperous states." - Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL

"Even the happiest choice, where favoring heaven has equal love and easy fortune given, think not, the husband gained, that all is done; the prize of happiness must still be won; and, oft, the careless find it to their cost, the lover in the husband may be lost; the graces might, alone, his heart allure; they and the virtues, meeting, must secure." - George Lyttleton, 1st Baron Lyttleton of Frankley

"To those who are His all things are not only easy to be borne, but even to be gladly chosen. Their will is united to that which moves heaven and earth, which gives laws to angels, and rule the courses of the world." - Henry Edward Manning

"To be mistaken is a misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one's actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn." - Guiseppe Mazzini

"When does God create heaven and earth? In the beginning. And when is the beginning? At every moment. Dying to past and future, we are born into the creative Now. Beginner's mind is the mind of God." - Stephen Mitchell

"Men are extremely inclined to the passions of hope and fear; a religion, therefore, that had neither a heaven nor a hell could hardly please them." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." - William Morris

"Faith is the inspiration of nobleness, it is the strength of integrity; it is the life of love, and is everlasting growth for it; it is courage of soul, and bridges over for our crossing the gulf between worldliness and heavenly-mindfulness; and it is the sense of the unseen, without which we could not feel God nor hope for heaven." - William Mountford

"Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage." - Thomas Nashe

"We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!" - Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL

"The divisions and boundaries that we perceive based upon our five senses are, in effect, an illusion. It’s my belief that the meaning of life changes from day to day, second to second. I believe we’re here to learn that we’re part of a creative force - I would go so far as to call that force divine. We’re here to learn that we can create a world and that we have a choice in what we create, and that our world, if we choose, can be a heaven or hell." - Thomas E. O’Connor

"All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter the good and the bad are the only distinctions." - Thomas Paine

"These are the times that try men's souls. The Summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its things; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial article as freedom should not be highly rated." - Thomas Paine

"Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal... Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth." -

"Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we'll Hear; what we Love, we'll Trust; and what we Love, we'll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me (says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he'll Love us; then we shall be his Friends; then he'll send us the Comforter; then whatsover we ask, we shall receive; and then where he is we shall be also, and that forever. Behold the Fruits of Love; the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another. " - William Penn

"There is no happiness for him who oppresses and persecutes; there can be no repose for him. For the sighs of the unfortunate cry for vengeance to heaven." - Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

"Heaven is equally distant everywhere." - Petronius, fully Gaius Petronius Arbiter Gasus , aka Petronius Arbiter NULL

"It would be correct to say that the world was not made in time, but that time was formed by means of the world, for it was heaven's movement that was the index of the nature of time." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Order is heaven’s first law." - Alexander Pope

"The platform of the altar of love may be analyzed and explained; it is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection. Such is the pyre, such is the offering; but the eternal spark must come from heaven, that lights the sacrifice." - Jane Porter

"Here is a mystery, the stupendous mystery of the Christian religion, the ineffable mystery of three persons in one God. We cannot define it. Every human attempt at definition involves it in deeper mystery. The arithmetic of heaven is beyond us. Yet this is no more mysterious and inexplicable than the trinity of our own nature; body, soul, and spirit; and no man has ever shown that it involved a contradiction or in any way conflicted with the testimony of our senses or with demonstrated truth; and we must accept it by the power of a simple faith, or rush into tritheism on the one hand or unitarianism on the other." - Frederick D. Power, fully Frederick Dunglison Power

"Heaven is never deaf but when man’s heart is dumb." - Francis Quarles

"The miracles of earth are the laws of heaven." -

"Tell men that God is love; that right is right, and wrong, wrong; let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin to love men; cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love God; then the spirit of liberty begins." -

"Heaven is the presence of God." - Christina Georgina Rossetti

"The mind is never right but when it is at peace within itself; the soul is in heaven even while it is in the flesh, if it be purged of its natural corruptions, and taken up with divine thoughts, and contemplations." -

"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart." -

"Lost wealth may be restored by industry, the wreck of health regained by temperance, forgotten knowledge restored by study, alienated friendship smoothed into forgetfulness, even forfeited reputation won by penitence and virtue. But who ever looked upon his vanished hours, recalled his slighted years, stamped them with wisdom, or effaced from Heaven's record the fearful blot of wasted time?" - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

"The kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man - his gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his care." - Jeremy Taylor

"It is not the eye, that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear, that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions." - Jeremy Taylor

"What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite!" - Jeremy Taylor