Great Throughts Treasury

"Almighty God, on lofty throne In wisdom Thou didst build the world, Thy might the firmament unfurled And Thou wast King ere kings were known. Sole King, who hung the earth on naught, In great assemblies I will cry, For every soul must testify, The Lord of hosts rules all He wrought. His seat is hid in mystery, Myriads of holy ones in dread, His ministers in lowlihead, Surround His awful Majesty. His praises in set order sing, Although all praise He hath outsoared, Declare the Kingdom of the Lord, Proclaiming that the Lord is King. The depths of sky His mercy planned, The waters are His footstools. He Their measures gave to stream and sea And poured them in with royal hand. The sea unto His bounds submits, Our King and God, so great and high, His glory covers all the sky When that upon His throne He sits. Sole King, He spreads for curtain Space, The sun uprises from the east To draw from earth a dainty feast, A strong man glad to run a race. O glorious Sovereign whom I sing, Be gracious unto us and kind, For Thine own sake, if but I find Grace in Thine eyes, my Lord and King." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"The woods were made for the hunter of dreams, The brooks for the fishers of song; To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game The streams and the woods belong. There are thoughts that moan from the soul of pine And thoughts in a flower bell curled; And thoughts that are blown with scent of the fern Are as new and as old as the world." - Sam Walter Foss

"And now this spell was snapt: once more I viewed the ocean green, And look'd far forth, yet little saw Of what had else been seen - Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turn'd round, walks on And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. " - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Reflection on what we seek to remember in practice, developing the capacity to see which stories serve to develop wholesome qualities and reduce suffering. The center of the talk is a tour through the Jewish year, interpreting each holiday as a form of retreat practice and the opportunity to awaken and develop heart qualities." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg

"Internalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to forms of therapy and theories of the subject." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

"At all costs we must re-establish faith in spiritual values. We must worship something beyond ourselves, lest we destroy ourselves." - Philip Gibbs, fully Sir Philip Gibbs

"When we do elect activists, we want them to change the thinking and behavior of other people, rarely our own." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"A Thirsty Fish - I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary of being compassionate toward me. All this thirst equipment must surely be tired of me, the water-jar, the water carrier. I have a thirsty fish in me that can never find enough of what it's thirsty for. Show me the way to the ocean. Break these half-measures, these small containers. All this fantasy and grief. Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night in the courtyard hidden in the center of my chest. Joseph fell like the moon into my we'll. The harvest I expected was washed away. But no matter. A fire has risen above my tombstone hat. I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine. The grief armies assemble, but I'm not going with them. This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence comes over me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about what's needed." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense anymore." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless; 'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you keep your eyes on the Friend." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Within tears, find hidden laughter Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Mystical wisdom, which comes through love, need not be understood distinctly… for it is given according to the mode of faith, through which we love God without understanding Him." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds. A soul filled with thoughts of sensual desire and hatred is unpurified. If we detect any trace of hatred in our hearts against any man whatsoever for committing any fault, we are utterly estranged from love for God, since love for God absolutely precludes us from hating any man." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

"I’d get down low, turn my plane up on its side, and fly right over a town. Once we had a spot picked out, we’d land, go find out who owned the property, and try to negotiate the deal right then. That’s another good reason I don’t like jets. You can’t get down low enough to really tell what’s going on, the way I could in my little planes." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"If you don’t want to work weekends, you shouldn’t be in retail." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"If you take someone who lacks the experience and the know-how but has the real desire and the willingness to work his tail off to get the job done, he’ll make up for what he lacks. And that proved true nine times out of ten." - Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton

"Dead counselors are the most instructive, because they are heard with patience and reverence." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view." - Samuel Eliot Morison

"A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"His mother's favorite, he possessed the self-confidence that told him he would achieve something worthwhile in life, and the ambition to do so, though for long the direction this would take remained uncertain." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Ah, me! it's a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Today is the day of salvation for the world." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"And there are men who wear out their bodies to no purpose in the pursuit of total dispassion, heavenly treasures, miracle working, and prophetic ability, and the poor fools do not realize that humility, not hard work, is the mother of such things." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"In all your undertakings and in every way of life, whether you are living in obedience, or are not submitting your work to anyone, whether in outward or in spiritual matters, let it be your rule and practice to ask yourself: Am I really doing this in accordance with God's will?" - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

"Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"Lernaeodiscus porcellanae turns control of the host into a fine art. After castration by the parasite, male crabs develop female characteristics in both anatomy and behavior, while females become even more feminized. The emerging externa then takes the same form and position as the crab's own egg mass... The crabs then treat the externa as their own brood. In other words, the parasite usurps all the complex care normally invested in the crab's own progeny." - Stephan Jay Gould

"What should the fossil record include if most evolution occurs by speciation in peripheral isolates? Species should be static through their range because our fossils are the remains of large central populations. In any local area inhabited by ancestors, a descendant species should appear suddenly by migration from the peripheral region in which it evolved. In the peripheral region itself, we might find direct evidence of speciation, but such good fortune would be rare indeed because the event occurs so rapidly in such a small population. Thus, the fossil record is a faithful rendering of what evolutionary theory predicts, not a pitiful vestige of a once bountiful tale." - Stephan Jay Gould

"He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn't really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box." - Stefan Zweig

"Heroic ages are not and never were sentimental and those daring conquistadores who conquered entire worlds for their Spain or Portugal received lamentably little thanks from their kings." - Stefan Zweig

"If you lend me your ears, I shall doubtless take your hearts too. That I may not lead you into any wrong, let me warn you of this. Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you be true to God." - Theodore Parker

"I class myself as a manual laborer." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

"The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy." - Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

"Were there no women, men might live like gods." - Thomas Dekker

"A free man, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to." - Thomas Hobbes

"Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil." - Thomas Hobbes

"I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." - Thomas Hobbes

"Men are freed of their covenants two ways; by performing, or by being forgiven. For performance is the natural end of obligation, and forgiveness the restitution of liberty, as being a retransferring of that right in which the obligation consisted." - Thomas Hobbes

"That a man be willing when others are so too as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself." - Thomas Hobbes

"The final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants, and observation of those laws of nature set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters." - Thomas Hobbes

"If treasury bills are emitted on a tax appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of six per cent, there is no one who would not take them in preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and loans would reduce them in time." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is necessary to give as well as take in a government like ours." - Thomas Jefferson

"Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God." - Thomas Jefferson

"The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes [and] delegated to that government certain definite powers and whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. To this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming, as to itself, the other party. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution the measure of its powers." - Thomas Jefferson

"Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you." - Thomas Jefferson