Great Throughts Treasury

"What a man is before God, that he is, and nothing more." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"Quick enough, if good enough." - Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL

"There is no hardship more oppressive to the soul than slander, whether one is slandered in his faith or in his conduct. And no one can disdain it except the one who like Susanna looks to God who alone can rescue in need, as he rescued her, and to reassure men, as he did in her case, and to encourage the soul with hope." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

"For if we want to have our own ways always, aren’t we really seeking our reward here below in the things of this life? Let us couple patience and long-suffering in the spirit of meekness and faith, and so bring forth fruit in patience." - Saint Anthony of Padua or Anthony of Lisbon, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões NULL

"From this it is that countless evils have arisen - from ignorance of the Scriptures; from this it is that the plague of heresies has broken out; from this it is that there are negligent lives; from this there are labors without advantage. For as men deprived of this daylight would not walk aright, so they that look not to the gleaming of the Holy Scriptures must be frequently and constantly sinning, in that they are walking in the worst darkness." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"No grief reaches the dead." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"Love, I said, it seemed strangely gastric certain sensations of the first symptoms of dizziness, restlessness and tremors produced a so delicate that one was not sure if he loved or was going to vomit." - Salvador Dalí, fully Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech

"A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism." - Salvatore Quasimodo

"Faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is, instead, an inner force that gives them the strength to face those storms and their consequences with serenity of spirit." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!" - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"Nothing is more clever, nothing can deny better or is more all-knowing than ignorance." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget." - Samuel Butler

"Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance." - Samuel Butler

"But Hudibras gave him a twitch As quick as lightning in the breech, Just in the place where honour 's lodg'd, As wise philosophers have judg'd; Because a kick in that part more Hurts honour than deep wounds before." - Samuel Butler

"Foundations of morality are like all other foundations; if you dig too much about them, the superstructure will come tumbling down." - Samuel Butler

"Genius ... has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble... It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains." - Samuel Butler

"It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something." - Samuel Butler

"It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence." - Samuel Butler

"Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself." - Samuel Butler

"No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there." - Samuel Butler

"The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world." - Samuel Butler

"The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty, For want of fighting was grown rusty, And ate into itself, for lack Of somebody to hew and hack." - Samuel Butler

"The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life." - Samuel Butler

"We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower animals." - Samuel Butler

"With crosses, relics, crucifixes, beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes, The tools of working out salvation By mere mechanic operation." - Samuel Butler

"Television has raised writing to a new low." - Samuel Goldwyn

"Yes, but keep copies. -- When his secretary asked him if she should destroy files that were over ten years old." - Samuel Goldwyn

"It is a fact that trade unionism in America moves on its own set and deliberate way. In so doing, it has outlived wave upon wave of hastily conceived so-called broad movements that were to reconstruct society in a single season. And it has sufficiently good cause for continuing its own reasoned-out course." - Samuel Gompers

"There was a time when workmen were denied the right of leaving their employers, when they were part of the soil, owned by their employers, and any attempt on their part to leave was regarded as the escape of a slave, brought back, imprisoned, branded, and gibbeted. Not many years ago, when workmen counseled with each other for the purpose of resisting a reduction in their wages or making an effort to secure an increase, it was held to be a conspiracy punishable by imprisonment. Through the effort of organized labor, an enlightened public sentiment changed all this until to-day the right to unite for material, moral, and social improvement on the part of workers is accepted by all." - Samuel Gompers

"I still can't believe it was news that I get my hair cut at the barbershop. Where else would I get it cut? Why do I drive a pickup truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?" - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free — and worth a fortune." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"There’s a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Health is so necessary to all the duties as well as pleasures of life that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife, he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Whatever be the motive of an insult it is always best to overlook it; for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"But Lord! To see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at everything that looks strange." - Samuel Pepys

"The world will change for the better when people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the way the world is, and decide to change themselves." - Sidney Madwed

"Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, "Why not?" and the other, "Why bother?"" - Sydney J. Harris

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass." - Simone Weil

"The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Men and woman, young and old, rich and poor, the sanguine and despondent, the sick and whole, rulers and ruled, the wise and ignorant, the cowardly and courageous, the wrathful and meek, the successful and failing, do not require the same instruction and encouragement." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"Do not try to be verbose when you pray, lest your mind be distracted in searching for words. One word of the publican propitiated God, and one cry of faith saved the thief. Loquacity in prayer often distracts the mind and leads to fantasy, whereas brevity makes for concentration." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"We live in an essential and unresolvable tension between our unity with nature and our dangerous uniqueness. Systems that attempt to place and make sense of us by focusing exclusively either on the uniqueness or the unity are doomed to failure. But we must not stop asking and questing because the answers are complex and ambiguous." - Stephan Jay Gould