Great Throughts Treasury

"There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it." -

"To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself." -

"Where speech is corrupted, the mind is also." -

"Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind." - Johann Gottfried Seume

"Sin is a state of mind, not an outward act." - William Sewell, also credited to J.M. Sewell

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye." -

"Self-control is promoted by humility. Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Humility is the antidote to this evil." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

"Impure thoughts awaken impure feelings, lead to impure expressions, and beget impure actions, and these lead to imbecility both of body and mind, and to the ruin of all that is noble and pure in character." - Charles Simmons

"Recreation is not being idle; it is easing the wearied part by change of occupation. To re-create strength, rest. To re-create mind, repose. To re-create cheerfulness, hope in God, or change the object of attention to one more elevated and worthy of thought." - Charles Simmons

"Have I done anything for society? I have then done more for myself. Let that truth be always present to thy mind, and work without cessation." - William Gilmore Simms

"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder." - William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, fully Field Marshal Sir William Joseph "Bill" Slim

"An improper mind is a perpetual feast." - Logan Pearsall Smith

"Repose is agreeable to the human mind; and decision is repose. A man has made up his opinions; he does not choose to be disturbed; and he is much more thankful to the man who confirms him in his errors, and leaves him alone, than he is to the man who refutes him, or who instructs him at the expense of his tranquillity." - Sydney Smith

"Whatever may happen in the future, I know that I have learned three things which will remain forever convictions of my heart as well as my mind. Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful and miraculous treasure in the world. Fulfillment of duty is another beautiful thing, making life happy and giving to the soul an unconquerable force to sustain ideals. This is my second conviction, and my third is that cruelty, hatred, and injustice never can and never will be able to create a mental, moral or material millennium." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

"A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge as stubborn temper to happiness." - Robert Southey

"The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers as well as composes the soul. It banishes, indeed, all levity of behavior, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others as well as to be pleased in itself." -

"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor." - Edmund Spenser

"Fear arises from impotence of mind, and therefore is of no service to reason nor is pity, although it seems to present an appearance of piety." -

"In all exact knowledge the mind knows itself under the form of eternity; that is to say;, in ever such act it is eternal and knows itself as eternal. This eternity is not a persistence in time after the dissolution of the body, no more than pre-existence in time, for it is not commensurable with time at all. And there is associated with it a state or quality of perfection called the intellectual love of God." -

"It is evident that our mind, insofar as it understands, is an eternal mode of thought, which is determined by another eternal mode of thought, and this again by another, and so on infinitum, so that all taken together from the eternal and infinite intellect of God." -

"It is... most profitable to us in life to make perfect the intellect or reason as far as possible, and in this one thing consists the highest happiness or blessedness of man; for blessedness is nothing but the peace of mind which springs from the intuitive knowledge of God, and to perfect the intellect is nothing but to understand god, together with the attributes and actions of God, which flow from the necessity of His nature. The final aim, therefore, of a man who is guided by reason, that is to say, the chief desire by which he strives to govern all his other desires, is that by which he is led adequately to conceive himself and all things which can be conceived by his intelligence." -

"Love toward a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with pure joy, and is wholly free from sorrow; this is to be greatly desired and strenuously sought for." -

"Nothing is in itself absolutely sacred, or profane, or unclean, apart from the mind, but only relatively thereto." -

"The body cannot determine the mind to thought, neither can the mind determine the body to motion nor rest, nor to anything else, if there be anything else... That is to say, that the mind and the body are one in the same thing, conceived at one time under the attribute of thought, and at another under that of extension. For this reason, the order or concatenation of things is one, whether nature be conceived under this or under that attribute, and consequently the order of the actions and passions of our body is coincident in nature with the order of the actions and passions of the mind." -

"The highest good of the mind is the knowledge of God, and the highest virtue of the mind is to know God." -

"The ignorant man is not onlyh agitated by external causes in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were, both of God an of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases also to be. On the other hand, the wise man, in so far as he is considered as such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being concscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of soul." -

"The intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love with which God loves Himself... Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love of God towards men and the intellectual love of the mind towards God are one and the same thing." -

"The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has, and... it acts in proportion to the number of adequate ideas which it has." -

"The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God." -

"With regard to marriage, it is plain that it is in accordance with reason, if the desire of connection is engendered not merely by external form, but by a love of begetting children and wisely educating them; and if, in addition, the love both of the husband and wife has for its cause not external form merely, but chiefly liberty of mind." -

"A light and trifling mind never takes in a great ideas, and never accomplishes anything great or good." - Charles Sprague

"The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals." -

"We are wrong to fear superiority of mind and soul; this superiority is very moral, for understanding everything makes a person tolerant and the capacity to feel deeply inspires great goodness." -

"When no new thoughts fill the mind - when no horizons beckon - when life is in the past, not in the future - you are on the way to uselessness." - Frederick K. Stamm

"The goal of life is imminent in each moment, each thought, word, act, and does not have to be sought apart from these. It consists in no specific achievement, but the start of mind in which everything is done, the quality infused into existence. The function of man is not to attain an object, but to fulfill a purpose; not to accomplish but be accomplished." - Stephen Berrien Stanton

"As for my labors, if they can but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning’s cheerfulness to an honest mind - in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from then the smallest addition to their innocent diversions - I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little superfluities of garniture and equipage. The blossoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

"Give us grace and strength to forbear and to preserve. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends and soften to us our enemies. Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

"Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words." -

"The infant is born in the same universe where lives the adult of ripe mind. But its position is not like a schoolboy who has yet to learn his alphabet, finding himself in a college class. The infant has it own joy of life because the world is not a mere road, but a home, of which it will have more and more as it grows up in wisdom. With our road that gain is at every step, for it is the road and the home in one; it leads us on yet gives us shelter." -

"The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform... Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed." -

"To be conscious of being absolutely enveloped by Brahma is not an act of mere concentration of mind. It must be the aim of the whole of our life. In all our thoughts and deeds we must be conscious of the infinite." -

"When we accept any discipline for ourselves, we try to avoid everything except that which is necessary for our purpose; it is this purposefulness, which belongs to the adult mind, that we force upon school children. We say, “Never keep your mind alert, attend to what is before you, what has been given you.” This tortures the child because it contradicts nature’s purpose, and nature, the greatest of all teachers, is thwarted at every step by the human teacher who believes in machine-made lessons rather than life lessons, so that the growth of the child’s mind is not only injured, but forcibly spoiled." -

"No man becomes fully evil at once; but suggestion bringeth on indulgence; indulgence, delight; delight, consent; consent, endeavor; endeavor, practice; practice, custom; custom, excuse; excuse, defense; defense, obstinacy; obstinacy, boasting; boasting, a seared conscience and a reprobate mind." - Thomas De Witt Talmage

"If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious." - Jeremy Taylor

"The human mind always runs downhill from toil to pleasure." -

"What, what is virtue but repose of mind?" - Harold W Thompson

"True valor lies in the mind, the never-yielding purpose, nor owns the blind award of giddy fortune." - Edward Thomson

"What, what is virtue, but repose of mind. A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm; above the reach of wild ambitions’ wind, above those passions that this world deform and torture man." - Edward Thomson