Great Throughts Treasury

"Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

"The best days of the church have always been its singing days." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

"Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only." - Thomas Jefferson

"Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing." - Thomas Merton

"Defer not till to-morrow to be wise, to-morrow's Sun to thee may never rise; or should to-morrow chance to cheer thy sight with her enlivening and unlook'd for light, how grateful will appear her dawning rays! As favors unexpected doubly please." - William Congreve

"There is nothing in Socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"Here we go again! America is running true to form, fixing some other country’s business for ’em just as we always do. We mean well, but will wind up in wrong as usual." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts." - Washington Irving

"A sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use." - Washington Irving

"It is, indeed, the season of regenerated feeling--the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial flame of charity in the heart." - Washington Irving

"No sooner does he hear any of this brothers mention reform or retrenchment, than up he jumps." - Washington Irving

"Thus by such victory, not by machines but in oppositions to the principle to the principles of machines, has the freedom of states been preserved by the cunning of architects." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"The medicine increases the disease." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"In certain vast enterprises when the superhuman seems necessary, bravery is little less than madness." - Victor Hugo

"Mayor Madeline: If we took a little time, the nettle would be useful; we neglect it, and it becomes harmful. Then we kill it. Men are so like the nettle! There are no bad herbs, and no bad men; there are only bad cultivators." - Victor Hugo

"The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! ... Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation." - William James

"This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I have been into many of the ancient cathedrals - grand, wonderful, mysterious. But I always leave them with a feeling of indignation because of the generations of human beings who have struggled in poverty to build these altars to an unknown god." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"Character is the one thing we make in this world and take with us into the next." - Ezra Taft Benson

"May we pledge anew that the divine principles embodied in the divinely inspired documents that govern our country be written on the tablets of our own hearts. I pray that our eyes might be single to the will of God, that we might thereby bless our families and our country and that we shall, with increased devotion, work for less government, more individual responsibility, and, with GodÂ’s help, a better world." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done (see Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42)." - Ezra Taft Benson