Great Throughts Treasury

"Little children disturb your sleep; big ones, your life." - Yiddish Proverbs

"If little else, the brain is an educational toy." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Time is the solemn inheritance to where every man is born heir, who has a life-rent of this world – a little section cut out of eternity and given to us to do our work in: an eternity before, and eternity behind; and the small stream between, floating swiftly from one into the vast bosom of the other." -

"We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to be hungry every night." - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

"Since everything that comes into the human minds enters through the gates of sense, man’s first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Greatness consists in doing great deeds with little means – in the accomplishment of vast purposes. It consists in the private ranks of life – in helping one’s fellows, benefiting one’s neighborhood, in blessing one’s own city and state." -

"Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans." - David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz

"Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil. Perhaps it is a lonely person, or an invalid - or some unfortunate inefficient, to whom you can be something. It may be an old man or it may be a child. Or some good work is in want of volunteers who will devote a free evening to it or will run on errands for it. Who can reckon up all the ways in which the priceless fund of impulse, man, is capable of exploitation! He is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some play where you may invest your humanity." - Albert Schweitzer

"He enjoys much who is thankful for little; a grateful mind is both a great and happy mind." - Thomas Secker

"It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"The five happiest people I have ever met all had this strange little quirk of referring to their jobs as a “calling.”" - Eric Sevareid, fully Arnold Eric Sevareid

"Little things loom large in small and empty minds." - Richard “Rick” Sinclair

"The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power." - Baird T. Spalding

"He who would take good care of his health should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits and worry his soul? Therefore he would nourish his nature should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not too much and not too constantly. He should aim at being a little hungry when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy." - Ssemiao NULL

"What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making." - Laurence Steinberg

"The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another's little lapses." - David Storey

"What matters is the kind of life which people lead and the satisfaction they find in it. And here, I suspect, most of us think too much of problems and too little of persons." -

"In Nature we best see God under a disguise so heavy that it allows us to discern little more than that someone is there; within our own moral life we see Him with the mask, so to say, half fallen off." - Alfred Edward Taylor

"The world, for whose sake does it exist? For the sake of the little ones, of all places, of all times…" - Shaul Tchernichovsky

"So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much learning, and so little wisdom… the one divine thing left to us is sadness… Without sadness where were brotherliness?" - Francis Thomson

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." - Desmond Tutu, fully Desmond Mpilo Tutu

"To know a little less and to understand a little more: that, it seems to me, is our greatest need." - James Ramsey Ullman

"I do not understand how people declare themselves to be believers in God, and at the same time think that God has handed over to a little body of man all truth, and that they are guardians of the rest of humanity." - Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL

"There is only one such Self, and that one self is you. Standing behind this little nature is what we call the Soul… He is the Soul of your soul… You are one with Him." - Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL

"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts."" -

"Happiness doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have. We can be happy with little and miserable with much." - William Dempster Hoard

"A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men." - Willy Wonka

"A great flame follows a little spark." -

"Always try to be a little kinder than necessary." -

"To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself." - Bernard Iddings Bell

"Have you ever noticed or thought about how little eye contact most of us have with strangers? Why? Are we afraid of them? What keeps us from opening our hearts to people we don't know?" - Richard Carlson

"When I look at the stars and realize that the light from some of these suns takes a million years to reach my eyes, I realize how tiny and insignificant this earth is, and how microscopic and evanescent are my own little troubles. I will pass on soon; but the sea stretching for a thousand miles in all directions and the stars and the spiral nebulae swarming through illimitable space above, they will continue for millions of years. I marvel that any man looking up at the stars can have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance." -

"Listen to people in truly great companies talk about their achievements - you will hear little about earnings per share." - James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras

"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort." - Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." - Albert Einstein

"The buried talent is the sunken rock on which most lives strike and founder." - Frederick William Faber

"Speak little, do much ... Actions speak louder than words." - Benjamin Franklin

"Americans often pride themselves on being members of the largest, most enduring, and most successful democracy in the world. Yet their lives, to a great degree, are channeled, shaped, and determined by the decisions of a very few people sitting in the board rooms and executive suites of the giant corporations, over whom they exercise little control." - Edward S. Greenberg

"Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it." - Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more."" -

"The Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little." -

"I will be grateful for the twenty-four hours that are before me. Time is a precious commodity. I refuse to allow what little time I have to be contaminated by self-pity, anxiety, or boredom. I will face this day with the joy of a child and the courage of a giant. I will drink each minute as though it is my last. When tomorrow comes, today will be gone forever. While it is here, I will use it for loving and giving. Today I will make a difference." - Max Lucado

"The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. Never failure but low aim, is life greatest tragedy." - Benjamin E. Mayes

"You have to study a great deal to know a little." -

"The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, cunning, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment – or at least much handicap – to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need." - Michael Parenti

"To be able to say how much you love is to love but little." -

"A little learning is a dangerous thing." - Alexander Pope

"It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers." -

"If humanity, or life in general, was created to serve a particular purpose beyond itself, our being would be analogous to a manufactured artifact. There seems to be little in this state of affairs to justify the exultation that religious people sometimes feel in thinking that God's plan reveals the purpose and the meaning of all reality." - Irving Singer