Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Rule

"Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"If a man were born so divinely gifted that he could naturally apprehend the truth, he would have no need of laws to rule over him; for there is no law or order which is above knowledge, nor can mind, without impiety, be deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather the lord of all. I speak of mind, true and free, and in harmony with nature. But then there is no such mind anywhere, or at least not so much and therefore we must choose law and order, which are second best." - Plato NULL

"Those who tell the stories rule society. " - Plato NULL

"There can be no happiness either for the community or for the individual man, unless he passes his life under the rule of righteousness with the guidance of wisdom." - Plato NULL

"When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

"Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself." -

"Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are despotic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Beside the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Spiritual force is stronger than material force; thoughts rule the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Spiritual force is stronger than material; thoughts rule the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Thoughts rule the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation – to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Great men are they who see the spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What is the matter with the world that it is so out of joint? Simply that men do not rule themselves but let circumstances rule them." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A leader must give credit to a staffer for a job well done both personally and if possible publicly as well. The best rule: Be generous in sharing credit with subordinates when an initiative succeeds and be prepared to take the blame if it fails." -

"Three ideas stand out above all others in the influenced they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: The idea of the Golden Rule; the idea of natural law; the idea of age-long growth or evolution." -

"Thou must content thyself to see the world imperfect as it is. Thou wilt never have any quiet if thou vexest thyself because thou canst not bring mankind to that exact notion of things and rule of life which thou hast formed in thy own mind." - Thomas Fuller

"No man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Apparently, it is the nature of all human relationships to aspire to be permanent. To propose temporariness as a goal in such relationships is to bring them under the rule of aims and standards that prevent them form beginning. Neither marriage, nor kinship, nor friendship, nor neighborhood can exist with a life expectancy that is merely convenient." - Wendell Berry

"Brains and character rule the world. The most distinguished Frenchman of the last century said: “Men succeed less by their talents than their character.” There were scores of men a hundred years ago who had more intellect than Washington. He outlives and overrides them all by the influence of his character." - Wendell Phillips

"Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath - tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the moment." - William Hazlitt

"The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind." - William Hazlitt

"The ultimate aim of Government is not to rule or restrain by fear, not to exact obedience, but on the contrary, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself and others. The object of government is not to hang men from rational beings into puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled... The true aim of Government is liberty." -

"Education is, as a rule, the strongest force on the side of what exists and against fundamental change: threatened institutions, while they are still powerful, possess themselves of the educational machine, and instill a respect for their own excellence into the malleable minds of the young." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man." -

"The only rule is, do what you really, impulsively, wish to do. But always act on your own responsibility, sincerely. And have the courage of your own strong emotion. " - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

"18/40/60 Rule When you're eighteen, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you. When you're forty, you don't give a damn about what anybody thinks of you. When you're sixty, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all." - Daniel Amen

"You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler. " - Denis E. Waitley

"This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier made up than when once it has taken air." - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

"There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters." - Dmitri Shostakovich, fully Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich

"No totalitarians, no wars, no fears, famines or perils of any kind can really break a man's spirit until he breaks it himself by surrendering. Tyranny has many dread powers, but not the power to rule the spirit." -

"No totalitarians, no wars, no fears, famines or perils of any kind can really break a man's spirit until he breaks it himself by surrendering. Tyranny has many dread powers, but not the power to rule the spirit." - Edgar Sheffield Brightman

"The body is likened to a small city: like two kings who wage war over a city, each desiring to capture it and rule over it, that is, to govern its inhabitants according to his will so that they obey him in all that he decrees for them, so do the two souls - the G‑dly [soul] and the animal [soul] - wage war against each other over the body and all its organs and limbs. The desire and will of the G‑dly soul is that it alone should rule over the person and direct him, and that all his limbs should obey it and surrender themselves completely to it and become a vehicle for it, and serve as a vehicle for its ten faculties [of intellect and emotion] and three "garments" [thought, speech and action]... and the entire body should be permeated with them alone, to the exclusion of any alien influence, G‑d forbid... While the animal soul desires the very opposite." - Shneur Zalman of Liadi

"Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life. The greatest asses of the world are those who, lacking all understanding and instruction, and void of all civil life and custom, rot in perpetual pedantry; those who by the grace of heaven would reform obscure and corrupted faith, salve the cruelties of perverted religion and remove abuse of superstitions, mending the rents in their vesture. It is not they who indulge impious curiosity or who are ever seeking the secrets of nature, and reckoning the courses of the stars. Observe whether they have been busy with the secret causes of things, or if they have condoned the destruction of kingdoms, the dispersion of peoples, fires, blood, ruin or extermination; whether they seek the destruction of the whole world that it may belong to them: in order that the poor soul may be saved, that an edifice may be raised in heaven, that treasure may be laid up in that blessed land, caring naught for fame, profit or glory in this frail and uncertain life, but only for that other most certain and eternal life." - Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno

"Cultivate fine taste and discrimination in your choice of things. Get a right idea of values. Material possessions that you do not need and cannot use may be only an encumbrance. Let your guiding rule be not how much but how good. A thing you do not want is dear at any price. Avoid surplus age. Choose things that express your own individuality. You must possess your things or they will possess you. Look for quality rather than quantity. Unnecessary possessions bring unnecessary care and responsibility. Excess is waste. Have an occasional stocktaking and eliminate unsparingly." - Grenville Kleiser

"As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use. " - Gustave Flaubert

"I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." - H.A.L. Fisher, fully Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher

"To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places. " - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Thrift is a habit. A habit is a thing you do unconsciously or automatically, without thought. We are ruled by our habits... The habit of thrift proves your power to rule your own psychic self. You are the captain of your soul. You are able to take care of yourself, and then out of the excess of your strength you produce a surplus." - Harvey A. Blodgett

"When you are faced with food that has been sterilized, fumigated, hydrogenated, hydrolyzed, homogenized, colored, bleached, puffed, exploded, defatted, degermed, texturized, or if you don’t know what has been done to it, the safest rule is not to eat it." - Helen Knothe Nearing

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn

"Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances. " - Herodotus NULL

"The rule in religious matters is that understanding proceeds through living what one is trying to understand. " - Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith

"The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business. " - J. C. Penney, formally James Cash Penney