Great Throughts Treasury

"Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature." - Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

"The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Every new theory as it arises believes in the flush of youth that it has the long sought goal; it sees no limits to its applicability, and believes that at last it is the fortunate theory to achieve the 'right' answer. This was true of electron theory—perhaps some readers will remember a book called The Electrical Theory of the Universe by de Tunzelman. It is true of general relativity theory with its belief that we can formulate a mathematical scheme that will extrapolate to all past and future time and the unfathomed depths of space. It has been true of wave mechanics, with its first enthusiastic claim a brief ten years ago that no problem had successfully resisted its attack provided the attack was properly made, and now the disillusionment of age when confronted by the problems of the proton and the neutron. When will we learn that logic, mathematics, physical theory, are all only inventions for formulating in compact and manageable form what we already know, like all inventions do not achieve complete success in accomplishing what they were designed to do, much less complete success in fields beyond the scope of the original design, and that our only justification for hoping to penetrate at all into the unknown with these inventions is our past experience that sometimes we have been fortunate enough to be able to push on a short distance by acquired momentum. " - Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman

"The great object I desire to accomplish by this institution [the Cooper Institute], is to open the avenues of scientific knowledge to the youth of our country, so unfolding the volume of Nature, that the young may see the beauties of creation. " - Peter Cooper

"He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom. " - Peter De Vries

"Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood. " - Peter Medawar, fully Sir Peter Brian Medawar

"Can love and peace live in the same heart? Youth is unhappy because it is faced with this terrible choice: Love without peace, or peace without love." - Pierre Beaumarchais, fully Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

"In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long." - Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL

"You are not young relatively. Your present youth means that your body is young. The older your spirit, the better can you preserve the youth, vigor, and elasticity of your body. Because the older your mind, the more power has it gathered from its many existences. " - Prentice Mulford

"The following points are intended to amplify my meaning: 1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection. 2. For their development, children need to the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. 3. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of the adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired. 4. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain. Since children in this hurtful kind of environment are forbidden to express their anger, however, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was done to them. 5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide). 6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned -- indeed, held in high regard -- in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents. 7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials and nurses to support the child and believe in her or him. 8. Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve their parents, whom they invariably love [I would say 'need' - SH] of all responsibility. 9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, through new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences of childhood are stored up in the body and, though unconscious, exert an influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults -- that a child responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning. 10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood need no longer remain shrouded in darkness. 11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment will as a matter of course bring an end to the perpetuation of violence from generation to generation. 12. People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be -- both in their youth and in adulthood -- intelligent, responsive, empathic and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their own children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience, and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. It will be inconceivable to such people that earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel comfortable and safe in this world. Since it will not be their unconscious drive in life to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and creatively." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"Brethren, life is passing; youth goes, strength decays. But duty performed, work done for God--this abides forever, this alone is imperishable." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity. Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe" - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"There are gains for all our losses, there are balms for all our pains, but when youth the dream departs it takes some thing from our hearts and never comes again. We are stronger and are better under manhood’s sterner reign, still we feel that some thing sweet followed youth with flying feet and will never come again. Some thing beautiful has vanished and we sigh for it in vain. We behold it every where---- on the earth and in the air---- But it never comes again." - R. H. Stoddard, fully Richard Henry Stoddard

"HAST thou no right to joy, O youth grown old! who palest with the thought Of the measureless annoy, The pain and havoc wrought By Fate on man: and of the many men, The unfed, the untaught, Who groan beneath that adamantine chain Whose tightness kills, whose slackness whips the flow Of waves of futile woe: Hast thou no right to joy? Thou thinkest in thy mind In thee it were unkind To revel in the liquid Hyblian store, While more and more the horror and the shame, The pity and the woe grow more and more, Persistent still to claim The filling of thy mind." - R. W. Dixon, fully Richard Watson Dixon

"We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits." - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West

"My sins are more in number than the hairs on my head. I have bestowed my youth in wantonness, lust and uncleanness; I have been puffed up with pride, vanity and love of this wicked world’s pleasures. For all which, I humbly beseech my Saviour Christ to be a mediator to the eternal Majesty for my pardon, especially for this my last sin, this great, this bloody, this crying, this infectious sin, whereby so many for love of me have been drawn to offend God, to offend their sovereign, to offend the world. I beseech God to forgive it us, and to forgive it me – most wretched of all." - Robert Devereux, Lord Essex, 2nd Earl of Essex

"Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous." -

"O youth whose hope is high, Who dost to Truth aspire, Whether thou live or die, O look not back nor tire." - Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges

"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith 'A whole I planned Youth shows but half; trust God: See all nor be afraid!'" - Robert Browning

"What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew." - Robert Browning

"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold." - Robert Browning

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime You may for ever tarry." - Robert Herrick

"There's sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the day I die. " - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"There's A race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far, They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in. " - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"The noblest contribution which any man can make for the benefit of posterity, is that of a good character. The richest bequest which any man can leave to the youth of his native land, is that of a shining, spotless example." - Robert C. Winthrop,fully Robert Charles Winthrop

"Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous." -

"Like a bridegroom the sun Dons his robe that is spun Of light, Which from Thee emanated Yet in no wise abated Thy light. Taught to go westward round With obeisance profound To his Lord, He by service so loyal To a master so royal Is a lord. While his homage each day Serves to mark and display Thy glory, ’Tis Thy hand that investeth The robe on which resteth His glory." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"THE DWELLERS IN CLAY - O habitants of homes of clay, Why lift ye such a swelling eye, Ye are but as the beasts that die, What do ye boast of more than they? It is for us the wiser part To know ourselves for worms whose doom Is in the clay to find a tomb, Nor, falsely proud, exalt our heart. What shall aught profit mortal man Whose latter end adjoins the grave? Here were no change, though Nature gave A thousand years to be his span. Should he as rebel walk, behold Earth opens hot to swallow up His ashes in her flaming cup And vain is all his might of gold. Unhappy man, with chastened soul, And opened eyes, true vision win, To see thy lowly origin And thy inevitable goal. To what may be compared thy lot? Thou art, O weak and wretched wight, The gourd that shot up in the night And in the morning it was not. To be unborn were better worth Than thus to reap distress and pain, For how essay great things to gain When struggling in this snare of earth? A fallen creature from the womb, Thou sinnest for a slice of bread, And in a moment’s wildered dread, Can live through every plague and gloom While spirit with thy body links, With living light shall glow thy flesh, But should the soul desert its mesh, To mire and sliminess it sinks. Behold no jot with thee will stay Of all the glory now so great, Strangers shall seize thy loved estate, And empty thou shalt go away. Thy soul thou gavest o’er to lust, Nor pondered on this bitter truth. But if thou sinnest in thy youth, What wilt thou do when thou art dust? O let the wicked turn aside, And take, O King, the path to Thee. Perchance the Rock will heed the plea, And from His wrath the sinner hide. O haughty-souled, come gather all, Remember and stand fast and raise Your heart and hands in common praise And thus to God in heaven call: "Woe to our souls, and wellaway For all the sins that we have sinned, Alas, we have pursued the wind And like to sheep have gone astray. "What favour can we ask or grace? The wave of sin has overflowed Our heads, and heavy is our load Of guilt, how dare we lift our face? "Draw up Thy people from the pit, Thou Ruler of the depth and height, Stiff-necked were we in Thy despite, Yet of Thy mercies bate no whit "But shed Thy sweet compassion o’er The people knocking at Thy gate, Thou art the Master of our fate, And unto Thee our eyes upsoar."" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"O my God, If my iniquity is too great to be borne, What wilt Thou do for Thy great name’s sake? And if I do not wait on Thy mercies, Who will have pity on me but Thee? Therefore though Thou shouldst slay me, yet will I trust in Thee. For if Thou shouldst pursue my iniquity, I will flee from Thee to Thyself, And I will shelter myself from Thy wrath in Thy shadow, And to the skirts of Thy mercies I will lay hold until Thou hast had mercy on me, And I will not let Thee go till Thou hast blessed me. Remember, I pray Thee, that of slime Thou hast made me, And by all these hardships tried me, Therefore visit me not according to my wanton dealings, Nor feed me on the fruit of my deeds, But prolong Thy patience, nor bring near my day, Until I shall have prepared provision for returning to my eternal home, Nor rage against me to send me hastily from the earth, With my sins bound up in the kneading-trough on my shoulder. And when Thou placest my sins in the balance Place Thou in the other scale my sorrows, And while recalling my depravity and frowardness, Remember my affliction and my harrying, And place these against the others. And remember, I pray Thee, O my God, That Thou hast driven me rolling and wandering like Cain, And in the furnace of exile hast tried me, And from the mass of my wickedness refined me, And I know ’tis for my good Thou hast proved me, And in faithfulness afflicted me, And that it is to profit me at my latter end That Thou hast brought me through this testing by troubles. Therefore, O God, let Thy mercies be moved toward me, And do not exhaust Thy wrath upon me, Nor reward me according to my works, But cry to the Destroying Angel: Enough! For what height or advantage have I attained That Thou shouldst pursue me for my iniquity, And shouldst post a watch over me, And trap me like an antelope in a snare? Is not the bulk of my days past and vanished? Shall the rest consume in their iniquity? And if I am here to-day before Thee, "To-morrow Thine eyes are upon me and I am not." "And now wherefore should I die And this Thy great fire devour me?" O my God, turn Thine eyes favourably upon me For the remainder of my brief days, Pursue not their escaping survivors, Nor let the remnant of the crops that the hail hath spared Be finished off by the locust for my sins. For am I not the creation of Thy hands, And what shall it avail Thee That the worm shall take me for its meal And feed on the product of Thy hands?" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"He is very sorry that such undesirable things are every now and then cropping up in … and discouraging you in your work, keeping you from devoting all your spare time in teaching the Cause, and spreading its principles. He does not wish you, however, to lose heart from such things. As the Cause grows its difficulties will increase and its problems will become more numerous. The friends, especially the older ones, should therefore try and stand unmoved by them. In fact the more their difficulties will increase the more they have to take courage and try to solve them. The Master has often said that sorrows are like furrows, the deeper they go the more productive the land becomes. If this problem. .. should be settled other problems will arise. Are the friends to become discouraged or are they to follow the footsteps of the Master and consider them more as chances to show their tenacity of belief and spirit of sacrifice?" - Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání

"The positive desire for self-work and growth is often hampered by our weak character, forgetfulness, instability and the many other attacks our yetzer (evil inclination) launches upon us. [We say to ourselves:] “The ground you have given me is infertile…” Woe is to the one who lacks patience with oneself! Such an individual will speedily despair from all self-work and growth, and even if he does not totally lose hope, he inevitably falls into sadness, and there is no greater damaging state of being to our service of Hashem than sadness." - Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

"I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place." - Helen Rowland

"They say that the Dead die not, but remain near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, in wise majestic melancholy train, and watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, and men, coming and going on the earth." - Rupert Brooke

"If the child does not cry, the mother knows not its wants." - Russian Proverbs

"As for our proper peace, we have it double with God; here below by faith, and hereafter above by sight. But all peace we have here, be it public or peculiar, is rather a solace to our misery, than any assurance of our felicity." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"Lift up and stretch out your hands, not to heaven, but to the poor; for if you stretch forth your hands to the poor, you have reached the summit of heaven, but if you lift up your hands in prayer without sharing with the poor, it is worth nothing." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"Why, you ask, do we see evil doers thriving and healthy and enjoying great prosperity? Let us weep for them, because they’re not having to suffer in this world is a guarantee of greater punishment in the next! To show this, St. Paul said, ‘But when we are judged, we are being chastised by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with this world. Afflictions here are a form of reproof, while this in the other world are a form of punishment for those who were evil in their lives.’" - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"A doctor who keeps a person from becoming ill deserves more merit than one who cures him." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"We mourn over the sin which brought about that downfall (the Temple destruction -- author), we take to heart the harshness which we have encountered in our years of wandering as the chastisement of a father, imposed on us for our improvement, and we mourn the lack of observance of the Torah which that ruin has brought about. Not in order to shine as a nation among nations do we raise our prayers and hopes for a reunion in our land, but in order to find a soil for the better fulfillment of our spiritual vocation in that reunion and in that land which was promised, and given, and again promised for our observance of the Torah. But this very vocation obliges us, until G-d shall call us back to the Holy Land, to live and to work as patriots wherever He has placed us, to collect all the physical, material and spiritual forces and all that is noble in Israel to further the weal of the nations which have given us shelter. It obliges us, further, to allow our longing for the far-off land to express itself only in mourning, in wishing and hoping; and only through the honest fulfillment of all Jewish duties to await the realization of this hope. But it forbids us to strive for the reunion or possession of the land by any but spiritual means." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom, it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams

"Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name." - Samuel Butler

"Fair nymph, if fame or honour were to be attained with ease, then would I come and rest me there," - Samuel Daniel

"Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Such is the constitution of man, that labor may be styled its own reward. - Nor will any external incitements be requisite if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Vast is the field of Science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know." - Samuel Richardson