Great Throughts Treasury

"Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, be be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth, and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation." - George Washington

"Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is a last year’s nest, from which the bird has flown." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is last year's nest, from which the bird has flown." - Henry Ward Beecher

"An acre of performance is worth the whole world of promise." - James Howell

"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil." -

"Committing to our creativity is an act of faith, a promise that we will keep at it despite our fears and failings and despite whatever obstacles we find in our paths." - Jan Phillips

"If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner

"To a thong of aging infants, the consumer society holds out the promise of eternal youth, of an enchanted mirror in which the customer can see himself reflected in the transfiguring light of immortality." - Lewis H. Lapham

"Don’t ever promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise." - Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz

"In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"The Church owes its life to the word of promise through faith, and is nourished and preserved by this same word." - Martin Luther

"Man should remember that God speaks the truth and promises by Himself, the Truth. If God were to be false to His word, His Truth, He would be false to His Divinity, and then He would not be God. It is his promise that our pains shall be changed to joy." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway… You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

"Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"There is no stronger force that you can employ against temptation than wisdom. Complete understanding will bring you to the point where nothing can tempt you to actions that promise pleasure but in the end will only hurt you." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"It is not strange at all that the spread of divorce in a society is accompanied by a diminishing of public morality in all sectors… True love does not exist if it is not faithful. And it cannot exist if it is not honest. Neither can it be in the concrete vocation of matrimony if there is no full promise that lasts until death. Only indissoluble matrimony will be firm and lasting support for the familial community." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"One should not promise a child something and then not give it as he thus teaches the child to lie." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"We are drawn into intimacy by possibilities rather than by realities, by the promise of things to come rather than by proven accomplishments, and perhaps by seductions that are darker than the bright reasons to which we admit." - Thomas Moore

"We can end the impossible quest for the perfect structure - the happy family, the completely satisfying marriage, the unbroken friendship. We can find some purpose in the failures, the intimacies that never got off the ground, the possibilities that never took flesh. The soul does not share the spirit’s love of perfection and wholeness, but finds value in fragmentation, incompleteness, and unfulfilled promise." - Thomas Moore

"We always expect love to be healing and whole, and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures... Our love and our high expectations that it will somehow make life complete seem to be an integral part of the experience. Love seems to promise that life's gaping wounds will close up and heal. It makes little difference that in the past love has shown itself to be painful and disturbing. There is something self-renewing in love." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward

"History consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters. " - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair

"Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it. " -

"Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it. " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. " - James Allen

"It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely." - Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

"There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards." - Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL

"In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"Music is a prophecy of what life is to be, the rainbow of promise translated out of seeing into hearing." - Lydia Maria Child

"The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them." - Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert

"The promise of "beauty"- of being desirable- lulls the young woman [Sleeping Beauty] into an existential limbo where everything is measured by the expectation of one who is to come...The kiss that Sleeping Beauty waits for is not that of any Prince, but the embrace of her own being." - Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag

"Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust

"Speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. Whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. Console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. Offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. Tomorrow comes more brightly." - Mary Anne Radmacher

"Courage is confidence. No matter how dark night may be, courage always finds the light and the promise of a distant star. " - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash

"Publication of the "Humanist Manifesto" will, in my opinion, serve no sufficient purpose. I cannot believe with you that it will clarify the public mind, or do constructive work for the cause. A set of fifteen principles, detached from the living experience which precipitated them and lacking the life and warmth of the interests they represent, can do little to inform the mind and nothing to stir the heart. Humanism—if I understand the philosophy of it—cannot be "sold" to people. If the "Manifesto" were a rallying cry issuing with glowing conviction from a group on the march together, or if it gave promise of gripping men and women of humanistic leanings, drawing them into closer, more understanding and more active unity, it would be a desirable signal. Unfortunately, I see no such service in it. And experience has taught me to beware of deceiving myself into thinking something has really been done when all that has been done is that something has been said. It would be easier for me to write, "Sure, go ahead, put me down." If I take the harder course and do not sign the document which I know will carry the names of men I greatly admire and respect, it is because of a deep conviction that the "Manifesto" will prove to be an ineffectual gesture, and a tactical error." - Max Otto, fully Max Carl Otto

"Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead." - Maxwell Maltz

"It may seem hard to believe, but it's catastrophe that offers the most promise for an even richer life. This is the gateway to the good stuff. In other words, you never truly know which way the wind is blowing until the shit hits the fan." - Michael J. Fox

"Without the promise of confidentiality, many important conduits of information about government activity would be shut down, ... Nothing less than the public's right to know is at stake." - Mike Pence, formally Michael Richard "Mike" Pence

"There was a time when we the U.S. had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and '07 and '08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born...The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it. " - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"Do you know What does it mean that God exists? Means that our concerns are melting in an atmosphere of mercy and forgiveness, Forgiving Most Merciful .. Not our Lord say to us (with the lining) and narrow the vagina comes with it and in what I send a human to check on these species. Because God .. One .. There will not be in existence another god will not invalidate the promise ourselves we split the parties and will not and will not between loyalty and loyalty to the right and left and fawn fawn of the East and the West and pleaded for the rich and powerful slumped on the doorstep .. Each has strengths and each has a rich and all the knowledge he has and all that we aspire to in his hands .. And escape from it but not to him." - Mustapha Mahmoud

"I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life, therefore, I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action." - Napoleon Hill

"Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit." - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"You will find yourself among people. There is no help for this nor should you want it otherwise. The passages where no one waits are dark and hard to navigate. The wet walls touch your shoulders on each side. When the trees were there I cared that they were there. And now they are gone, does it matter? The passages where no one waits go on and give no promise of an end. You will find yourself among people, Faces, clothing, teeth and hair and words, and many words When there was life, I said that life was wrong. What do I say now? You understand?" - Paul Bowles

"We have to realize that a unified theory of the physical world simply does not exist. We have theories that work in restricted regions, we have purely formal attempts to condense them into a single formula, we have lots of unfounded claims (such as the claim that all of chemistry can be reduced to physics), phenomena that do not fit into the accepted framework are suppressed; in physics, which many scientists regard as the one really basic science, we have now at least three different point of view (relativity, dealing with the very large, quantum theory for an intermediate domain and various particle models for the very small) without a promise of conceptual (and not only formal) unification; perceptions are outside of the material universe (the mind-body problem is still unsolved) - from the very beginning the salesman of a universal truth cheated people into admissions instead of clearly arguing for their philosophy. And let us not forget that it was they and not the representatives of the traditions they attacked who introduced argument as the one and only universal arbiter. They praised argument - they constantly violated its principles." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

"I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer. " - Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

"In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel… In the first place, you shouldn’t believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead. Those who make promises they don’t keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises." -

"Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth. " - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"" - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engine of oppression." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL