Great Throughts Treasury

"Prize and study the Scripture. We can have no delight in meditation on him unless we know him; and we cannot know him but by the means of his own revelation; when the revelation is despised, the revealer will be of little esteem. Men do not throw off God from being their rule, till they throw off Scripture from being their guide; and God must need be cast off from being an end, when the Scripture is rejected from being a rule. Those that do not care to know his will, that love to be ignorant of his nature, can never be affected to his honor. Let therefore the subtleties of reason vail to the doctrine of faith, and the humor of the will to the command of the word." - Stephen Charnock

"Oh if life were made of moments Even now and then a bad one — ! But if life were only moments, Then you'd never know you had one." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

"Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination." - Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey

"And I recall a conversation with Sir Henry Irving one night when he said to me, “Fetch me a glass of water, will you?” and I said, “Sir Henry, it is not only a pleasure to get it but it is to me, as a humble devotee of the art that you have ennobled, a high privilege. I will go further—” “Do,” he said. Henry was like that, quick, sympathetic, what we call in French “vibrant.”" - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns," - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"But I am convinced that those Jews who stand aside today with a malicious smile and with their hands in their trousers' pockets will also want to dwell in our beautiful home." - Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl

"Here were these two, bandying little phrases, drawing purses, looking at cards, and both unconscious of how inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough to be sure of the working of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his luring succeeded. She could not realized that she was drifting, until he secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something - he, that he had gained a victory. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His words were easy. Her manner was relaxed." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"Gratitude is a nice touch of beauty added last of all to the countenance, giving a classic beauty, an angelic loveliness, to the character." - Theodore Parker

"The gusto of one, the indignation of the other; the challenge of the one party, the response of the other; the eloquence and the comedy, the passion and the issues were ours-no other country can provide them." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

"A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [...] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Each people can do justice to itself only if it does justice to others; but each people can do its part in the world movement for all only if it first does its duty within its own household. The good citizen must be a good citizen of his own country first before he can with advantage be a citizen of the world at large." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"When the question of the new coinage came up we looked into the law and found there was no warrant therein for putting 'In God We Trust' on the coins. As the custom, although without legal warrant, had grown up, however, I might have felt at liberty to keep the inscription had I had approved of its being on the coinage. But as I did not approve of it, I did not direct that it should again be put on. Of course the matter of the law is absolutely in the hands of Congress, and any direction of Congress in the matter will be immediately obeyed. At present, as I have said, there is no warrant in law for the inscription." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The Stupid man is one who, after doing a sum and setting down the total, will ask the person sitting next to him ‘What does it come to?’" - Theophrastus NULL

"Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope." - Thomas Carlyle

"It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great mass of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanic's institutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well-conditioned peasantry, so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety." - Thomas Chalmers

"Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is...that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no, look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept three score and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it." - Thomas Dekker

"Yesterday's success belongs to yesterday." - Thomas Dewar, Lord Dewar, fully Thomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

"Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake." - Thomas Hobbes

"For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State which is but an Artificial Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended; and in which, the Sovereignty is an Artificial Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body" - Thomas Hobbes

"Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to a man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange is that passion which we commonly call admiration; and the same considered as appetite is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge." - Thomas Hobbes

"Words are the money of fools. It can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it." - Thomas Hobbes

"Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man." - Thomas Hobbes

"A certain portion of the human race has certainly a taste for being diddled." - Thomas Hood

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fi fty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." - Thomas Jefferson

"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs." - Thomas Jefferson

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

"It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government." - Thomas Jefferson

"Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous." - Thomas Jefferson

"Neither believe nor reject anything because any other person's rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven." - Thomas Jefferson

"No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature." - Thomas Jefferson

"Our wish is that... [there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers." - Thomas Jefferson

"Paper is poverty... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." - Thomas Jefferson

"Parties are... censors of the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen for the public. Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, ...Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object." - Thomas Jefferson

"That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied." - Thomas Jefferson

"The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves." - Thomas Jefferson

"The principles of our Constitution are wisely opposed to all perpetuations of power, and to every practice which may lead to hereditary establishments." - Thomas Jefferson

"The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery." - Thomas Jefferson

"The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their subsistence, unincumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life." - Thomas Jefferson

"To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life." - Thomas Jefferson

"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson

"Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?" - Thomas Jefferson

"With nations, as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties; and history bears witness to the fact, that a just nation is taken on its word, when recourse is had to armaments, and wars to bridle others." - Thomas Jefferson

"Anyone who regards love as a deal made on the basis of “needs” is in danger of falling into a purely quantitative ethic. If love is a deal, then who is to say that you should not make as many deals as possible?" - Thomas Merton

"Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself." - Thomas Merton

"In a spiritual crisis of the individual, the truth and authenticity of the person’s spiritual identity are called into question. He is placed in confrontation with reality and judged by his ability to bring himself into a valid and living relationship with the demands of his new situation. In the spiritual, social, historic crises of civilizations – and of religious institutions – the same principle applies. Growth, survival and even salvation may depend on the ability to sacrifice what is fictitious and unauthentic in the construction of one’s moral, religious or national identity. One must then enter upon a different creative task of reconstruction and renewal. This task can be carried out only in the climate of faith, of hope and of love: these three must be present in some form, even if they amount only to a natural belief in the validity and significance of human choice, a decision to invest human life with some shadow of meaning, a willingness to treat other men as other selves." - Thomas Merton