Great Throughts Treasury

"A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says, 'I was beaten,' he does not say 'My men were beaten.'"

"A friend is, above all, one who judges not... For beyond and above our differences we meet on common ground, and I am his friend. And, when we are together, I can keep silence, having nothing to fear from him for my inner gardens, my mountains and my ravines - for he will not trample them."

"“Ends” are mere appearances, landmarks strewn haphazard along a path whose issue is hidden from you."

"And now I would impart to you a secret - which is that of permanence. When you sleep your life is in abeyance; but it is likewise in abeyance when those eclipses of the heart befall you which are the causes of your weakness. For around you nothing is changed, yet all has changed within you."

"Bear well in mind that your whole past was but a birth and a becoming."

"Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruelest of sufferings. For, not withstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love’s opposite."

"Desire not to change a man into something other than he is. For it is certain that good reasons, against which you can do nothing, constrain him to be thus and not otherwise. But you can impart a change to that which is already; for a man has many parts, he is virtually everything, and you are free to select in him that part which pleases you. And to limn its outline, so that it is evident to all, and to the man himself. Then, once he perceives it, he will accept it (having readily enough accepted it the day before) even though he has no special ardor to second him therein. And likewise once, by dint of having fixed his attention on it, it has been integrated within him, and indeed become a second nature, it will live the life of all things which seek to perpetuate and augment themselves."

"Ever a man seeks after what is weightiest in him; and not for happiness."

"Giving much thought to the future is vain. Only one task is worthy of the doing and that is to express the Here and Now. And to express means building, out of the infinite diversity of the Here and Now, a visage dominating it. It means shaping silence out of stones. Any other claim is but an ado of words that weave the wind."

"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded."

"Events have no form save that which the creative mind chooses to impose on them. Thus all forms are equally valid when you compare them."

"Evil is it when the heart vanquishes the soul. Evil, too, when emotion vanquishes the mind."

"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. As for any other freedom it is but a mockery and a delusion, for however free you may think yourself, you have to use the door when you go out of the room, nor are you free to make yourself young at will or to profit by the sun at night... Not-being is not freedom."

"How great a fire is kindled by one man’s plight!"

"Happiness is something immediately perceptible."

"It is not the intellect but the spirit of man that rules the world."

"Life has a meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself."

"Know then that all true creation is not a prejudgment of the Future, not a quest of utopian chimeras, but the apprehending of a new aspect of the Present, which is a heap of raw materials bequeathed by the Past, and it is for you neither to grumble at it nor to rejoice over it, for, like yourself, all these things merely are, having come to birth."

"It is impossible to confer happiness on men, as something they can store up and possess."

"If it is not a matter of subordinating the One to the Many, but of harnessing each to grow greater; and this, perhaps, by the very fact that they are at odds."

"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction."

"Man ceases to be concerned with himself: he recognizes of a sudden what he forms part of. If he should die, he would not be cutting himself off from his kind, but making himself one of them... An isolated individual does not exist. He who is sad, saddens others."

"Man is what he is, not that which can be expressed. True the aim of all awareness is to express that which is, but expression is a slow, elusive task, and it is a mistake to assume that anything incapable of being stated in words does not exist."

"Mankind I know not; I know men. Not freedom, but free men. Not happiness, but happy men. Not beauty, but beautiful things. Not God, but the pure flame of tapers. Those who bend their minds on definitions otherwise than as wellsprings of significance, prove but the void of their hearts, and their own inanity. And they will neither live nor die, for men do not live or die by words."

"Man is a network of relationships, and these alone matter to him."

"Place no hope in man if he works for his own lifetime and not for his eternity."

"Peace is present when man can see the face that is composed of things that have meaning and are in their place. Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree."

"Nothing has meaning until I mingle my mind and body with it; nor is there adventure unless I share in it."

"Prison walls cannot confine him who loves, for he belongs to an empire that is not of this world, being made not of material things but of the meaning of things; and thus he mocks at walls."

"Only a small mind traffics in scorn; a mind whose truth accords no place to others’. But we who knew that different truths can coexist thought not that we were lowering ourselves by countenancing another’s truth, unpalatable though it might seem."

"The dignity of the individual requires that he not be reduced to vassalage by the largesse of others."

"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit."

"The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them."

"The domain of the spirit, where it can spread its wings, is - silence."

"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them."

"The truth is that you learn the lore of love only when your love is out of reach; and the lore of the blue landscape seen from your mountain-top only when you are struggling up a rock wall on your long ascent; and you learn of God only in the exercise of prayer that remains unanswered. For the one satisfaction that time cannot wither, the one joy that never knows regret, is that which is granted you when your course is run and in the fullness of time it is given you to be, having finished with becoming."

"There is no hope of joy except in human relations."

"They stagnated in that false happiness which comes of great possessions; whereas true happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating new things."

"Thus with love. They err who think that they have but to learn about love, if they are to come by it. And that man hoodwinks himself who drifts through life hoping to be vanquished by love, learning by fitful fevers to enjoy brief stirrings of the heart, ever thinking to encounter that supreme fever which will enkindle his whole life; though, by reason of his pettiness of mind and the insignificance of the hill he has climbed, it can be but a short-lived exaltation of his heart. Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb... For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance."

"The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate."

"To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible."

"True love begins when nothing is looked for in return. And if the habit of prayer is seen to be so important for teaching a man to love his fellow men, this is because no answer is given to his prayers. Your love is based on hatred when you wrap yourself up in a certain man or woman on whom you batten as a stock of food laid by and, like dogs snarling at teach other round their trough, you fall to hating anyone who casts even a glance at your repast. you call it love, this selfish appetite. No sooner is love bestowed on you than (even as in your false friendships) you convert this free gift into servitude and bondage and, from the very moment you are loved, you begin to fancy yourself wronged."

"True humility impels you, not to demean yourself, but to open your heart. It is the key to giving and receiving."

"Vanity bespeaks a lack of pride."

"Truth, for any man, is that which makes him a man."

"When you give yourself, you receive much more than you give. For, after being nothing, you become."

"When you judge, it is yourself you judge. This is your burden; but it is also your highest good."

"You give birth to that on which you fix your mind."

"All beliefs are demonstrably true. All men are demonstrably in the right. Anything can be demonstrated by logic."

"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart."