Great Throughts Treasury

"It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant - birth, struggle, and death are constant - and so is love, though we may not always think so - and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths - change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not - safety, for example, or money or power. One clings then to chimeras, but which one can only be betrayed, and the entire hope - the entire possibility - of freedom disappears." -

"Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks." - Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

"There is only one proof of ability - results. Men with ability in action get results." - Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band

"A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank." -

"Four men climbed a mountain to see the view. The first wore new and expensive shoes which did not fit, and he complained constantly of his feet. The second had a greedy eye and kept wishing for this house or that farm. The third saw clouds and worried for fear it might rain. But the fourth really saw the marvelous view. His mountain top experience was looking away from the valley out of which he had just climbed to higher things." - Howard D. Bare

"Without earnestness no man is ever great or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant; entertaining, popular; but he will want weight." - Peter Bayne

"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men." - Bill Beattie

"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men." - James Beattie

"Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression." - J. Beaumont

"The ambitious man grasps at opinion as necessary to his designs; the vain man sure for it as a testimony to his merit; the honest man demands it as his due; and most men consider it as necessary to their existence." - Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana

"Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means similar states of mind." - Clive Bell, fully Arthur Clive Heward Bell

"The lie of fear is the refuge of cowardice, and the lie of fraud, the device of the cheat. The inequalities of men and the lust of acquisition are a constant premium of lying." - Edward Bellamy

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love." - Saul Bellow

"Not being always able to follow others exactly, nor attain to the excellence of those he imitates, a prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it." -

"We want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be." - Bruno Bettelheim

"Men are used as they use others." - Bidpai (also Bidpay, Pilpay) Fables of Bidpay NULL

"Do not grieve. Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and what cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere." - Big Elk, aka Ontopanga NULL

"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their Passions or have no Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings." - William Blake

"Men err when they think they can be inhuman exploiters in their business life, and loving fathers and husbands at home." -

"The ultimate function of art is to make men do what they want to do, as it is to make them recognize what they know." - Maurice Blondel

"Men can know with the heart and not only with the mind." -

"All men are like in their lower nature; it is in their higher characters that they differ." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts; they are forever influencing the opinions and destinies of men." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better." - Christian Nestell Bovee

"The busiest of living agents are certain dead men's thoughts; they are forever influencing the opinions and destinies of men." - John Christian Bovee

"The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better." - John Christian Bovee

"There is no means by which men so powerfully elude their ignorance, disguise it from themselves and from others as by words." - Gamaliel Bradford

"We've learned how to destroy, but not to create; how to waste, but not to build; how to kill men, but not how to save them; how to die, but seldom how to live." -

"With monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has already outstripped our capacity to control it. We have many men of science, too few men of God." -

"People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they; then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much; more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them." - Frederika Bremer

"Men do very little from love, a great deal from hate, most of all from indifference." - Max Brod

"O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks." - Phillips Brooks

"While men believe in the possibilities of children being religious, they are largely failing to make them so, because they are offering them not a child's but a man's religion - men's forms of truth and men's forms of experience." - Phillips Brooks

"Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, by reiteration chiefly." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Eminent stations make great men more great, and little ones less." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses." - Jean de La Bruyère

"There are but three events which concern men: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Woman grow attached to men through the favors they grant them; but men, through the same favors, are cured of their love." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Effeminacy is not a feminine possession any more than a masculine one. Men or women become effeminate when privilege and lack of responsibility have made them weak. The true female creature, unspoiled, is tough, persistent, and strong." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

""Men of action," whose minds are too busy with the day's work to see beyond it. They are essential men, we cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by the limitations of "men of action."" - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"The basic discovery bout any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and women." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"It is not wisdom but ignorance that teaches men presumption. Genius may sometimes be arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as knowledge." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"What is past is past. There is a future left to all men who have the virtue to repent, and the energy to atone." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania, when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank, oh, then diet yourself well on biography - the biography of good and great men." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"Win hearts, and you have all men's hands and purses." - William Henry Burliegh