Great Throughts Treasury

"Great teachers know that they are always on stage and that who they are, how they act, and what they believe are as important as what they teach. Teaching, like leadership, is a performing art. Nonverbal behavior -- eye contact, posture, tone of voice, intensity, facial expression, and attitude -- have as much impact as, if not more than, what is said. Whether people listen to and believe, as opposed to just hear, a teacher depends on a host of variables." - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

"An illusion is the false appreciation of real sensation." - T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme

"He marks, and makes the golden world our own, Content with hands unsoil'd to guard the prize, And keep the store with undesiring eyes. So round the tree, that bore Hesperian gold, The sacred watch lay curl'd in many a fold, His eyes up-rearing to th' untasted prey, The sleepless guardian wasted life away. " - Thomas Tickell

"All of Jewish philosophy is but an attempt to fit inside the human mind that which is contained within the heart of a simple Jew. " - Tzvi Freeman

"Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say: sanctity is the state about which theology has nothing to say." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"When you know a lot, it’s all too easy to start teaching. But coaching is about helping him discover what he already knows, or can find out for himself. Teaching takes a long time and is about imparting knowledge. Coaching can be viewed not so much as a process of adding as it is a process of subtracting, or unlearning whatever is getting in the way of movement toward the client’s desired goal." - Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey

""Self-liberation" is what the Buddhist path is about; it's seeing through the illusion of a separate self and that, I think, attracted us a lot because we were burdened with too much self-the land of individual license plates and special little monads of selfhood buzzing around." - Wes Nisker, fully Wes "Scoop" Nisker

"It was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it." - William Cobbett

"Him, the vindictive rod of angry justice sent, quick and howling, to the centre headlong; I, fed with judgments, in a fleshy tomb, am buried above ground." - William Cowper

"Men deal with life as children with their play, who first misuse, then cast their toys away." - William Cowper

"But we can't alibi all our ills by just knocking the old banker. First he loaned the money, then the people all at once wanted it back, and he didn't have it. Now he's got it again, and is afraid to loan it, so the poor devil don't know what to do." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Farmers have about given up hope of getting farm relief and have decided to fertilize instead." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"It costs ten times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"It seemed to be the unanimous opinion of the convention that the management of the United States should be entirely in the hands of lawyers and judges, and that elected representatives of the people didn't know what they was doing." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic situation? We spent six years of wild buying on credit -- everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not -- and now we are having to pay for 'em, and we are howling like a pet coon." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Why don't they use a sales tax? That is the only fair and just tax. Have no tax on necessary foods, and moderate priced necessary clothes, but put a tax on every other thing you buy or use. Then the rich fellow who buys more and uses more certainly has no way of getting out of paying his share. Collect it at the source, that is at the manufacturer's. Don't depend on the retailer. Put big taxes on everything of a luxury nature. You do that, and let the working man know the rich have paid before they got it and you will do more than any one thing to settle some of the unrest and dissatisfaction that you hear every day. No slick lawyer or income tax expert can get you out of a sales tax." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"You must judge a man’s greatness by how much he will be missed." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"The world there was the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that reached to the sunset; between, the conquests of peace, dearer-bought than those of war." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Black Power simply means: Look at me, I'm here. I have dignity. I have pride. I have roots. I insist, I demand that I participate in those decisions that affect my life and the lives of my children. It means that I am somebody." - Whitney Young, fully Whitney Moore Young, Jr.

"In my view, wholesome pleasure, sport, and recreation are as vital to this nation as productive work and should have a large share in the national budget." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building! The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with that true architectonic spirit which, as "salon art", it has lost." - Walter Gropius, fully Walter Adolph Georg Gropius

"The news and the truth are not the same thing." - Walter Lippmann

"We know that the extension of knowledge has to consist in action, and it is clear that without action there can be no extension of knowledge. Does not the state of the unity of knowledge and action stand sharply in focus? . . . Whenever the superior man is engaged in practical affairs or discussion, he insists on the task of knowledge and action combined. The aim is precisely to extend the liangzhi of his original mind. He is unlike those who devote themselves to merely talking and hearing as though that were knowledge, and divide knowledge and action into two separate things as though they really could be itemized and take place one after the other." - Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

"Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate." - Washington Irving

"The more you see yourself as what you'd like to become, and act as if what you want is already there, the more you'll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"I love taking chances." - Wayne Newton, "Mr. Las Vegas"

"He who will not take what he can get may not have what he wishes." - Welsh Proverbs

"A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"We are so involved in masks, and intensities, and inflations we can’t see the authentic in us. The primitive drives are Transcendental and you undergo a sacrifice by no longer identifying them as yours. Then, there’s a most amazing experience that takes place: your natural power comes through. When the ego surrenders wrapping itself around something, you realize you are imbued by something else, and have been all along, and your task is to find the simplicity mystery in relationship to that, so that when it is operating you recognize it is operating through you, but you don’t identify with it either consciously or unconsciously. You offer yourself as a Vehicle – it’s a mystery of relationship to the larger forces." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone

"I enjoyed the mathematics that I had time to learn. If I ever need or want to learn some more, I shall not be afraid to do so." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"It is clear that a great increase in the quality of life would occur if we could improve the teacher-pupil ratio. In the present economic climate of the world, such an aspiration appears hopeless. However, most official economic thinking relates to an age long dead. It is concerned with greater efficiency of production. But it was evident in 1930, and is still more evident in the age of the micro-chip, that the problem is not to produce but to distribute. The main social problem is to keep people occupied; the main economic problem is to spread incomes so that people who need things can afford to buy them." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"The essential quality for a mathematician is the habit of thinking things out for oneself. That habit is usually acquired in childhood. It is hard to acquire it later." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality." - W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade

"Architects should be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere a pretense." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"The architect must not only understand drawing, but music." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"All our emotions and thoughts are conditioned reflexes, reactions." - Vimala Thakar

"Compassion does not manifest itself when we live on the surface of existence, when we try to piece together a comfortable life out of easily available fragments. Compassion requires a plunge to the depths of life—where oneness is reality and divisions merely an illusion. If we dwell at the superficial layers of being, we’ll be overly conscious of the apparent differences in human beings on the physical and mental level, and of the superficial difference in cultures and behavior. If we penetrate to the essentials, however, we will discover that there is nothing fundamental that differentiates any human being from another, or any human being from any other living creature. All are manifestations of life, created with the same life principles and nurtured by the same life-support systems. Oneness is absolute reality; differentiation has only transitory, relative reality." - Vimala Thakar

"People have generally followed one or the other of these two conventional approaches: religious groups concerned with inner growth and inner revolution, and social activist groups concerned with social service. Traditionally we have created boundaries, and exploration beyond our home territories has been only superficial. The social activists have staked out their territory, the outer life—the socioeconomic, political structures—and the spiritual people have staked out theirs—the inner world of higher dimensions of consciousness, transcendental experiences, and meditation. The two groups, throughout history, have been contemptuous of each other. The social activists consider the spiritual inquirers to be self-indulgent, and the inquirers consider the activists to be caught in a race of activity, denying the essence of living. Traditional spiritual leaders have divided life into worldly and spiritual, and have insisted that the world is illusion. They said, “This world is maya, is an illusion. So whatever action you take should be in relation to the absolute truth and not in relation to maya.” Thus a religious person sitting in meditation for ten hours a day need not mind the tyranny or the exploitation or the cruelties surrounding him. He would say, “That’s not my responsibility. It’s God’s responsibility. God has created the world. He or She will take care of it.”" - Vimala Thakar

"Silence and Emptiness - In the dimension of silence the movement of thought goes on without creating the illusion of a thinker. The reception of the sensation and the interpretation of the objects surrounding you takes place without the interpreter. The movement of thought goes on without the thinker. There is no centre to say: "I like this and I dislike that, I prefer this and I have a hatred for that". So there is involuntary cerebral activity without the psychological recording or registering. The movement of thought, the movement of knowledge goes on in the body like the movement of breath, of blood. Silence implies the existence of the total human past within you, inside you. It also implies the movement of knowledge, thought, etc. without the knower, without the thinker. The absence of the knower, the thinker, the experiencer, the centre - is the essential part of what we call silence. And because there is no centre, no knower, no experiencer you call it emptiness." - Vimala Thakar

"The thoughts cannot be suppressed nor can they be thrown away anywhere, you can only watch them, not naming them as good or bad. Then you are free from the roles of an experiencer and an actor, you enter into the state of an observer of non-reactional attention." - Vimala Thakar

"A light here required a shadow there." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs. Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr. Bankes’s glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr. Bankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw there. ‘But why different, and how different?’ she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do her bidding tomorrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found a crumpled glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness. She was willful; she was commanding (of course, Lily reminded herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune of Mrs. Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on one’s bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her beauty was always that—hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it might be—Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr. Carmichael snuffling and sniffing; Mr. Bankes saying, The vegetable salts are lost. All this she would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the window, in pretense that she must go,—it was dawn, she could see the sun rising,—half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing, insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole world whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs. Ramsay cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs. Ramsay had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs. Ramsay listening; shaded lights and regular breathing." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Self-development begins where self-righteousness ends." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"You are not really bothered by what others think of you. You are bothered by what you think of yourself." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard