Great Throughts Treasury

"Why are men afraid of women? The answer that's being given now is a very strange one. That all fetuses in the womb are originally female, we know that. And when the baby's marked to be a boy at about the age of six weeks, changes begin to occur, two hundred fifty of them. This eventually changes the body from a female into male, changes the brain, changes all these things. So, when the boy comes out he's really not sure that he's a man. Men are an experimental species. And the boy's afraid he's going to slide back. This takes place below the level of consciousness. But you can still feel it in seventeen-year-old boys. That's why they go to military school. Because there will be no one around there that will be feminine male. And they see a feminine male, they feel terrified that somehow they will slip back again. That's the terror." - Robert Bly

"What a thing friendship is, world without end!" - Robert Browning

"False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports." - Robert Burton

"Faith in friendship is the noblest part." - Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Baron Broghill

"The roots of male violence. I'll give you three answers that almost any sensible person gives, and I'll give another one that we've learned lately. The roots of male violence obviously go back to maybe four hundred thousand years of killing animals. And, so in the beginning, men were asked to be violent. And after that, as you know, after the hunter time, then people went into agriculture and the cities began to form. Then there was a surplus of grain and then neighboring people come to steal their grain. And they think there was no real warfare in the hunter-gatherer groups. But once the cities were formed, there was violence. So we have that in our bodies. Another reason I would give as to the roots of male violence is the amount of shame that men take in. Women take in tremendous amount of shame too, but women have talked about that for a long time. They discuss it, even in high school, that they went out on a date and they felt ashamed of this and the men simply say they, they lie -- "Buddy, I scored this, and I did..." -- you understand what I'm saying. So it takes a long time for men to learn to be able to talk about their shame. And sometimes what happens in the family is that a woman will say a criticism to a man, perfectly ordinary criticism, and it goes into some shame place in the heart, and he can't get it back out. And the only thing then he'll do, you understand me. So when people talk to me about violence, I say we have to think about shame. We have to think about the man being able to say at that moment, “I feel ashamed here by what you just said.” And the woman says, “Well, I didn't intend that. I was just trying to point out that you said you were going be, but you weren't.” So we do a lot of work with that. To try to, there's a great book called Shame by Gershin Caufman that talks about that. And I'm a shamed person, so I know something about that. Violence is not in the way that I went and my father didn't go that way, but I think he treated his shame with alcohol. The third thing and a fourth is this: you know the movement that we do (no matter what is said in television) about running naked in the woods and beating drums and all that stuff is really an effort to make men more expressive. This would be expressive. Many men numb themselves so they're not expressive. If you're too expressive in IBM, you get fired. And, so the reason we tell stories and when we have groups we recite poetry, read poetry to them for an hour before we go on to anything, that's expressiveness being able to do that. So I want to now relate that to violence, shall we?" - Robert Bly

"Lo, I return with my spirit in torment May God have mercy upon you, my brother! A day ago I buried you But even now my complaint is bitter. Greetings I bring you! Do you not hear When I call to you with all my might? Answer me: Do you not recognize The response of my crying lament? Are your bones starting to wither And your teeth loosening in the jaw? Has your moistness fled in the night Even as mine is running in my tears? O first born of my father, I have left you As security in the hand of my Creator Whose assurance I trust That you will go in peace." - Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah

"Spirit splits in its asking, and soul in its wanted is balked; and the body, fattened, is vital and full— its precious being uneasy . . . But the modest man walks on the earth with his thought drawn toward sky. What good is the pulse of man’s flesh and its favors when the mind is in pain?" - Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah

"There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring." - S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall

"I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end." - Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL

"From moment to moment one can bear much." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"Recollection is nothing else, in my opinion, but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him, who we know loves us." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"Reflect upon the providence and wisdom of God in all created things and praise Him in them all." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"Moral virtue can be without some of the intellectual virtues, namely, wisdom, science and art, but not without understanding and prudence. Moral virtue cannot be without prudence, because moral virtue is habit of choosing, that is, making us choose well." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"The person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL

"The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"To someone seeking power, the poorest man is the most useful." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"Courage, then, is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty." - Samuel Adams

"In this country my Lords... the individual subject... 'has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them'" - Samuel Horsley

"The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have a mutual connection, that any one of them may be the better understood for an insight into the rest." - Samuel Horsley

"A man, whose great qualities want the ornament of exterior attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure is exhausted." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"If a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away ever so little, he must begin again." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?" - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The first years of man must make provision for the last." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"It having been a very cold night last night I had got some cold, and so in pain by wind, and a sure precursor of pain is sudden letting off farts, and when that stops, then my passages stop and my pain begins." - Samuel Pepys

"It is said that it is far more difficult to hold and maintain leadership (liberty) than it is to attain it. Success is a ruthless competitor for it flatters and nourishes our weaknesses and lulls us into complacency." - Samuel Tilden, fully Samuel Jones Tilden

"Being conscious of the eternal self, one should give up association with women and those intimately associated with women. Sitting fearlessly in a solitary place, one should concentrate the mind on Me with great attention." - Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

"It is a dangerous policy to claim that we are acting improperly because of destiny or fate." - Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

"Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose." - Simone Weil

"To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile." - Simone Weil

"To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue)." - Simone Weil

"To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves." - Simone Weil

"It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"How, without clothes, could we possess the master organ, soul's seat and true pineal gland of the body social--I mean a purse?" - Thomas Carlyle

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you." - Thomas Jefferson

"I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad." - Thomas Jefferson

"It must be acknowledged that the term republic is of very vague application in every language... Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of direct action of the citizens. Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township." - Thomas Jefferson

"Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object." - Thomas Jefferson

"There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better." - Thomas Merton

"And no less preeminent a champion of American independence than Thomas Paine had the following words of reproach for the Good Book: As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book." - Thomas Paine