Great Throughts Treasury

"What if the healing of the world utterly depends on the ten-thousand invisible kindnesses we offer simply and quietly throughout the pilgrimage of each human life?" - Wayne Muller

"A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied. But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living." - Wendell Berry

"All good human work remembers its history." - Wendell Berry

"For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land." - Wendell Berry

"It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve." - Wendell Berry

"What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart." - Wendell Berry

"It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.'" - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function. How beautiful it is, that eye-on-the-object look." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"We frequently hear of people dying from too much drinking. That this happens is a matter of record. But the blame almost always is placed on whisky. Why this should be I never could understand. You can die from drinking too much of anything - coffee, water, milk, soft drinks and all such stuff as that. And so long as the presence of death lurks with anyone who goes through the simple act of swallowing, I will make mine whisky." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"Yes, if every other form of persuasion fails. [Response when asked if he believed in clubs for women]" - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I've been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants." - Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire

"What the Soviet Constitution gives us no other state has been able to give in two hundred years." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The man who says to me, 'Believe as I do, or God will damn you,' will presently say, 'Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you.'" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colors." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such- be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, t" - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction - so we are told." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Nothing is stronger than the position of the dead among the living." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"There's just this… an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"If life is difficult it is simply because the person has not corrected his difficult self." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"I wondered, “How and when did we make limits wrong and bad and freedom right and good?”" - Vicki Robin

"God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman." - Victor Hugo

"In the Divine Path, there is no chance of failure; it is the Path of Love." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"It is urgent that everyone should inquire into the true, the pure and the permanent; for there is at present a delusion about values. Even the leaders of people are hugging the false hypothesis that happiness can be had by means of wealth or health, housing or clothing, or the cultivation of skills in handicraft and manufacture." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The Creator Himself has created the universe; He Himself shall destroy it." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"There is in life the tragedy of ignorance and selfishness. They force man to take the wrong road; and suffer calamity." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man's life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"A Veena cannot exist without its strings. A chariot cannot exist without its wheels. Without her husband a woman can never live happily even though she has a hundred sons." - Valmiki NULL

"Nothing else can be as good as the blessing God has for you." - Vance Havner

"Merit is created through deeds that benefit society, such as building temples and repairing bridges and roads. Virtue means having a good conscience and not being ashamed before Heaven or people because one has neither deceived others nor cheated oneself." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"The ancient sages always blamed themselves. Modern people, however, look for faults in others instead of acknowledging their own faults." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"You should always maintain an attitude of deep respect and make obeisance to the great Bodhisattvas of the ten directions. For every bit of respect you have, you will gain a bit of response. If you are one hundred percent respectful, you will gain the benefit of a response of one hundred percent." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"To rejoice in another's prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own." - Tryon Edwards

"It is worms which destroy a tree, it is worry which destroys a man." - Turkish Proverbs

"One who sows wind will reap hurricane. (Used to caution people to moderate their actions.)" - Turkish Proverbs

"But self-renunciation means God-possession, the being possessed by God. Out of utter humility and self-forgetfulness comes the thunder of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." High station and low are leveled before Him. Be not fooled by the world's power. Imposing institutions of war and imperialism and greed are wholly vulnerable for they, and we, are forever in the hands of a conquering God. These are not cheap and hasty words. The high and noble adventures of faith can in our truest moments be seen as no adventures at all, but certainties. And if we live in complete humility in God we can smile in patient assurance as we work. Will you be wise enough and humble enough to be little fools of God? For who can finally stay His power? Who can resist His persuading love? Truly says Saint Augustine, "There is something in humility which raiseth the heart upward."" - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support-the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the street-corners or the opinions of the newspapers. A nation is led by a man who hears more than those things; or who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better, unites them, puts them into a common meaning; speaks, not the rumors of the street, but a new principle for a new age; a man in whose ears the voices of the nation do not sound like the accidental and discordant notes that come from the voice of a mob, but concurrent and concordant like the united voices of a chorus, whose many meanings, spoken by melodious tongues, unite in his understanding in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision, so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the common voice. Such is the man who leads a great, free, democratic nation." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson