Great Throughts Treasury

"For my own part, my belief in the perfection of the Deity will not permit me to believe that a book so manifestly obscure, disorderly, and contradictory can be His work" - Thomas Paine

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case." - Thomas Paine

"Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind." - William Blake

"We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be forever with Him. When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. In this world our contact with Him is shadowy, for we can only see through a glass darkly. It is spasmodic, for we are poor creatures and cannot live always on the heights. But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him anymore." - William Barclay

"Time is the mercy of eternity; without time's swiftness which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment." - William Blake

"A gambler is nothing but a man who makes his living out of hope." - William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

"Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die." - William Cowper

"Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"In the very best poetry there is often an under-song of sense which none but the poetic mind… can comprehend." - Walter Savage Landor

"Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream; I wish no happier one than to be laid beneath a cool syringa’s scented shade, or wavy willow, by the running stream, brimful of moral, where the dragon-fly, wanders as careless and content as I. Thanks for this fancy, insect king, of purple crest and filmy wing, who with indifference givest up the water-lily’s golden cup, to come again and overlook what I am writing in my book. Believe me, most who read the line will read with hornier eyes than thine; and yet their souls shall live forever, and thine drop dead into the river! God pardon them, O insect king, who fancy so unjust a thing!" - Walter Savage Landor

"No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be." - Walter Savage Landor

"There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature." - Washington Irving

"When he hung over the death-bed of his infant son Ibrahim, resignation to the Will of God was exhibited in his conduct under this keenest of afflictions; and the hope of soon rejoining his child in paradise was his consolation. When he followed him to the grave, he invoked his spirit, in the awful examination of the tomb, to hold fast to the foundations of the faith, the Unity of God, and his own mission as a Prophet." - Washington Irving

"Young lawyers attend the courts not because they have business there but because they have no business anywhere else." - Washington Irving

"The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment." - Wendell Berry

"A writer, or at least a poet, is always being asked by people who should know better: Whom do you write for? The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"One can only blaspheme if one believes." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness in a landscape selected at random is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings." - Victor Hugo

"Do you know what the teacher is doing? He is manufacturing minds. He is the wheelwright, the weaver, the blacksmith of that work in which he is God's helper — the future." - Victor Hugo

"From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us." - Victor Hugo

"There are people who observe the rules of honor as we observe the stars: from a distance." - Victor Hugo

"For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"If a person is gifting away his elephant but his heart is set on the rope used for tying the elephant, of what use is his attachment to the rope when he is giving away the elephant itself." - Valmiki NULL

"Seek truth in meditation, not in moldy books. Look in the sky to find the moon, not in the pond." - Turkish Proverbs

"Whatever purifies the heart also fortifies it." - Hugh Blair

"If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white." - William James

"It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends." - Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

"On the third day after the birth of a girl the ancients observed three customs: first to place the baby below the bed; second to give her a potsherd [a piece of broken pottery] with which to play; and third to announce her birth to her ancestors by an offering. Now to lay the baby below the bed plainly indicated that she is lowly and weak, and should regard it as her primary duty to humble herself before others. To give her potsherds with which to play indubitably signified that she should practice labor and consider it her primary duty to be industrious. To announce her birth before her ancestors clearly meant that she ought to esteem as her primary duty the continuation of the observance of worship in the home." - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

"Fate does not mean that your life is destined. Therefore, it is a sign of complete ignorance to leave everything to fate and not contributing actively to the music of the universe. ... Your destiny - it is the level where you play your tune. Unlikely to change tools, but depends solely on how well you'll play." - Elif Safak

"To-day the houses seemed taller and farther apart; the street wider and full of bright, clear light that cast no shadows and was never sunshine. Under archways and between the houses the distances had a curious transparency, as though they had been painted upon glass. Against the luminous and indeterminate sky the Abbey tower rose distinct and delicate." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

"Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found, a love that makes breath poor and speech unable." - William Shakespeare

"All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, the matchless tinting on the royal rose whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, these hold a deeper pathos than our woes, since they leave nothing better to expect." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being." - Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"A burden of one's own choice is not felt." - English Proverbs

"A hero is a man who is afraid to run away." - English Proverbs

"If we are going to live adequately and maturely as the people of God, we need more data to work from than our experience can give us. We need other experiences, the community of experience of brothers and sisters in the church, the centuries of experience provided by our biblical ancestors. A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week." - Eugene Peterson

"Ministry is a very confronting service. It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts." - Eugene Peterson

"The proper business of friendship is to inspire life and courage; and a soul thus supported outdoes itself; whereas if it be unexpectedly deprived of these succors it droops and languishes." - Eustace Budgell

"The violent desire of pleasing in the person reproved, may otherwise change into a despair of doing it, while he finds himself censured for faults he is not conscious of. A mind that is softened and humanized by friendship cannot bear frequent reproaches; either it must sink under the oppression, or abate considerably of the value and esteem it had for him who bestows them." - Eustace Budgell

"There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbandsÂ’ hearts for faults which, if a man has either good-nature or good-breeding, he knows not how to tell them of. I am afraid, indeed, the ladies are generally most faulty in this particular; who at their first giving into love find the way so smooth and pleasant that they fancy it is scarce possible to be tired in it. There is so much nicety and discretion required to keep love alive after marriage, and make conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promote it but an earnest endeavor to please on both sides, and superior good sense on the part of the man." - Eustace Budgell

"I don't believe that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh