Great Throughts Treasury

"Death fills me with its abundance. What is this flood, overcoming body and sense? I feel the walls of my skull crack, the barriers part, the sun-flood enter - Love, lore, not lost, only magnified, floating eternal seas of essence - before and behind births and deaths, spiritual gravitation, the emergence ever-more expanding... O my questioner! you do not suspect me - you suspect yourself: to-morrow, seeing yourself, you will see me, and the illumined spirit, passing the portal, God-grown, will hail me proudly." - Horace Traubel

"What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity, Magnanimity, Forgiveness? Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of securing one's self-approval." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

"The absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all condition - the victory of man - all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death! But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men to-day man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an attribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence." - Paul Tyner

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." -

"What is the meaning of life? The meaning may not be expressed in words. It transcends the mind and the intellect. The meaning is to be experienced, realized... It is open to everyone who would live according to certain disciplines... The discipline of duty. Life is a field of duty, not a dance of desires... The discipline of service... We are here to help others... The opposite of love is not hate but apathy... The discipline of silence... The meaning of life is to love God and to give the service of love to the suffering children of God. And to the birds and animals who are God’s children as well." - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani

"Habit is everything [all powerful] - even in love." -

"Respect wears itself out, just as love does." -

"Who rushes love rushes hate." - Solomon Ibn Verga

"Love conquers all; and we must yield to Love." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"Peace comes to us through love, understanding of our fellow men, faith. Peace does not include selfishness nor indifference. Peace is never wrapped at a counter for a price. It is earned by giving of ourselves." - Annette A Victorin

"In all times self-love has blinded the wisest." - Villefré NULL

"Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission - its masterpiece is, to reunite them." - Alexandre Vinet, fully Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet

"Offended self-love never forgives." -

"Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love." - Lew Wallace

"It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love." - Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford

"That advance we make after we have been devastated by love may be to be able simply to enter it freely once again, inspite of our suspicions, to draw ever closer to the darkness and hallowness that are mysteriously necessary in love." -

"It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness." - Francis Wayland

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon bronze, time will efface it; if we build temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal souls, if we imbue them with just principles of action, with fear of wrong and love of right, we engrave on those tables something which no time can obliterate, and which will brighten and brighten through all eternity." - Daniel Webster

"Genuine love is nurturing because it affirms our being, and thus inspires us to be more present." - John Welwood

"The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains." - John Greenleaf Whittier

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." -

"Fear of God builds churches but love of God builds men." - Louis O. Williams

"Self-love is a mote in every man's eye." -

"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." - William Wordsworth

"We live by admiration, hope and love." - William Wordsworth

"The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps a holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love." -

"The worth of love does not consist in high feelings, but in detachment, in patience under all trials for the sake of God whom we love." -

"Saint Francis says the key to the purpose of life is giving. In giving, you find happiness. You find peace. If you give, you find you are serving your purpose in life. In loving, you find love." - Franco Zeffirelli

"There are those who are fearful to be alone with themselves. They run with the crowd not out of love for others but out of fear to remain alone with themselves, terrified lest they hear the voice of their own spirit, or fearful of remaining alone with their own void." - Morris Adler

"It is a small thing to accept people for what they are; if we really love them we must want them to be what they are." - Alain Pen name of Emile-Auguste Chartier

"There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly that the tongue is able to so." - Vittorio Alfieri

"Romance cannot be put into quantity production - the moment love becomes casual; it becomes commonplace." - Kenneth Lewis Allen

"Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything." -

"Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love." -

"Life is short and we have not too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!" -

"Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with good, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows." -

"The highest function today of the teacher consists not so much in imparting knowledge as in stimulating the pupil in its love and pursuit... To know how to suggest is the art of teaching." -

"Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair; a lamp unto my feet, that sun was given; and death was safety and great joy to find; but dying now, I shall not climb to Heaven." - Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL

"Death and love are the two wings that bear the good man to heaven." - Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL

"Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream, then on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows, which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"A natural love of learning... man's highest possession." - Apocrypha NULL

"Love truth and it will preserve you." - Apocrypha NULL

"I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies." - Pietro Arentino

"Religion is a hunger for beauty and love and glory. It is wonder and the mystery and majesty, passion and ecstasy. It is emotion as well as mind, feeling as well as knowing, the subjective as well as the objective. It is the heart soaring to heights the head alone will never know; the apprehension of meanings science alone will never find; the awareness of values ethics alone will never reveal. It is the human spirit yearning for, and finding, something infinitely greater than itself which it calls God." - Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy." -

"Truly with an empty belly no one is in shape for love." - Saint Athanasius, aka Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Confessor, St. Athanasius the Apostolic NULL

"All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"It is with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace... Even wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that, if possible, all men belonged to them, that all men and things might serve but one head, and might, either through love or fear, yield themselves to peace with him!" - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL