Great Throughts Treasury

"Peace of mind is the greatest asset we can have for happy, healthy living. This is an inner victory which only comes from knowing God intimately. Then the material things of life do not both us any longer - we live in a spiritual world, and spiritual values are the only real values in life." - Albert E Cliffe

"Either for God or against God… Upon that choice hangs the fate of the world. In every department of life, in politics and economics, in the sciences and arts, in the State and in domestic life we follow God’s laws to peace or bypass them into chaos." -

"If we ourselves remain always angry and then sing world peace, it has little meaning. So first our individual self must learn peace. This we can practice. Then we can teach the rest of the world." -

"Giving oneself to God, even in the contemplative life, is no way to get peace of mind, but rather to get into the thick of the fighting." - Jean Daniélou

"If you want peace, do not see the faults of others; instead, see your own faults." - Sarada Devi, fully Sri Sarada Devi, born Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya

"Better than a thousand meaningless words is one word of sense which brings the hearer peace." - Dhammapada NULL

"If a man’s faith is unstable and his peace of mind troubled, his knowledge will not be perfect." - Dhammapada NULL

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature…. in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" -

"Discipline is not a simple device for securing superficial peace in the classroom; it is the morality of the classroom as a small society." -

"Lasting peace of mind is impossible apart from peace with God; yet enduring peace with God comes only when a man is ready to surrender his own peace of mind." - A. Roy Eckardt, fully Arthur Roy Eckardt

"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

"No benefit is more constant than simplicity; no happiness more constant than peace." - Han Fei, also Han Fei Zi, Han Feitzu and Han Fei Tzu

"The search for inner peace and the quest for peace in the world go hand in hand. The overall impact of the Ten Commandments is to show us how being a good person in the world and finding a sense of spiritual wholeness deep within are intimately connected to each other." - Leonard Felder

"The search for wholeness… The word integrity comes from the Latin integritas, which means to be whole or complete. In Hebrew the word for wholeness and completeness is shalom, which also means peace between people and peace within oneself. In Arabic, the word is salaam." - Leonard Felder

"Accustom yourself to the unreasonableness and injustice. Abide in peace in the presence of God, who sees all these evils more clearly than you do, and who permits them. Be content with doing with calmness the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not." -

"Those who accept what they suffer have no suffering of the will, and thus they are in peace." -

"A person [man] who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. People court war to escape meaninglessness and boredom to be relieved of fear and frustration." - Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré

"Peace will help development. Development will engender peace. They are both causes and effects. They strengthen each other." - José Figueres, fully José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer, aka Don Pepe

"Peace at any price can be the abnegation of morality entirely, the refusal of even a negative contribution to righteousness." - P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth

"No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it. Peace is a margin of power around our daily need. Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle of but of spiritual hospitality." -

"Only the conviction that it is the darkness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the lost peace of our souls." - Friedrich Fröbel, fully Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel

"The uncontrolled mind cannot concentrate. Who cannot concentrate has no peace, without peace, where is happiness?" -

"It is earnestly desired that each man should be wise enough to govern himself without the intervention of any compulsory restraint; and, since government, even in its best state, is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human society permit." - William Godwin

"In the endless self-repeating for evermore flows the Same. Streams from all things love of living, grandest star and humblest clod. All the straining, all the striving is peace in God." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an experience of being in pure consciousness which gives lasting peace to the soul. It is an experience of the Ground or Depth of being in the Centre of the soul, an awareness of the mystery of being beyond sense and thought, which gives a sense of fulfillment, of finality, of absolute truth." - Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion

"Universal responsibility is the real key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment." -

"The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

"Sublime is the moment when the world is at peace and the limitless deep lies bathed in the morning sun." - Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Shōwa or the Shōwa Emperor NULL

"Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?" - Hsun-Tzu NULL

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; when you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." - Victor Hugo

"They all knelt together and suddenly - not a barrier of any kind remained, not a sundering distinction in the whole throng; but every life flamed into the other, and all flamed into the one Life and were hushed in ineffable peace." - Zephrine Humphrey

"Get but that “peace of God which passeth understanding,” and the questions of the understanding will cease from puzzling and pedantic scruples be at rest." - William James

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." - Thomas Jefferson

"Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice… Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is radiant." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"So when in this day I see the leaders of nations again talking peace while preparing for war, I take fearful pause." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed." - Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL

"Going back to the origin is called peace; it means reversion to destiny. Reversion to destiny is called eternity. He who knows eternity is called enlightened." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"Weapons are tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint. Peace is the highest value." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"The world will believe in peace only when the Churches will demonstrate that it can exist." - J.J.A. Lecomte du Noüy, fully Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ

"The peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses. Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, “Do this”; reason, judgment, prudence say “It is your peril if you do!” One desire fights against another. And so the man is rent asunder. There must be the harmonizing of all the being if there is to be real rest of spirit." - Alexander Maclaren

"Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity." - Saint Albertus Magnus, aka "Doctor Universalis", Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus and Albert of Cologne, "the teacher of everything there is to know"

"You can’t separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom." -

"It is better to win the peace and to lose the war." - Bob Marley

"Happiness comes from the fulfillment of our physical, mental, and spiritual needs. It comes from the virtues and of being useful to others. It comes from forgiveness, charity, and all the noble acts that activate peace of mind and trigger joy. Happiness is not a commercial commodity available for buying or selling." - Bibhuti Mazumder

"The only alternative to war is peace and the only road to peace is negotiations." - Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson

"There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God." - Thomas Merton