Great Throughts Treasury

"O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries."

"Oh, when a mother meets on high the babe she lost in infancy, hath she not then for pains and fears, the day of woe, the watchful night, for all her sorrow, all her tears, an over-payment of delight?"

"Our restlessness in this world seems to indicate that we are intended for a better. We have all of us a longing after happiness; and surely the Creator will gratify all the natural desires He has implanted in us."

"Philosophy is of two kinds: that which relates to conduct, and that which relates to knowledge. The first teaches us to value all things at their real worth, to be contented with little, modest in prosperity, patient in trouble, equal-minded at all times. It teaches us our duty to our neighbour and ourselves. But it is he who possesses both that is the true philosopher. The more he knows, the more he is desirous of knowing; and yet the farther he advances in knowledge the better he understands how little he can attain, and the more deeply he feels that God alone can satisfy the infinite desires of an immortal soul. To understand this is the height and perfection of philosophy."

"So I told them in rhyme, for of rhymes I had store."

"Some voluntary castaways there will always be, whom no fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve from self-destruction; but if any are lost for want of care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the society to which they belong."

"Somebody has been at my porridge, and has eaten it all up!' said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice."

"Somebody has been lying in my bed!' said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice."

"St. Austin might have returned another answer to him that asked him, What God employed himself about beofre the world was made? He was making hell."

"Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world, would be palsied."

"The arts babblative and scribblative."

"The history of any private family, however humble, could it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate the state and progress of society better than the most elaborate dissertation."

"The laws are with us, and God on our side."

"The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin."

"The moon arose: she shone upon the lake, Which lay one smooth expanse of silver light; She shone upon the hills and rocks, and cast Upon their hollows and their hidden glens A blacker depth of shade."

"The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service."

"The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix."

"The three indispensable of genius are: understanding, feeling, and perseverance; the three things that enrich genius are: contentment of mind, the cherishing of good thoughts, and the exercise of memory"

"The true one of youth's love, proving a faithful helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over, and we live in its realities."

"Then more fierce The conflict grew; the din of arms, the yell Of savage rage, the shriek of agony, The groan of death, commingled in one sound Of undistinguish'd horrors."

"There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book."

"There are three things that ought to be considered before some things are spoken: the manner, the place, and the time."

"There is a magic in that little word, ? it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits."

"There is healing in the bitter cup."

"There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles ? that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith ? be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support."

"There was a time when I believed in the persuadability of man, and had the mania of man-mending. Experience has taught me better. The ablest physician can do little in the great lazar-house of society. He acts the wisest part who retires from the contagion."

"There was not, on that day a speck to stain The azure heaven; the blessed sun alone, In unapproachable divinity, Career'd, rejoicing in his fields of light."

"They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity."

"This is the first heavy loss which you have ever experienced; hereafter the bitterness of the cup will have passed away, and you will then perceive its wholesomeness. This world is all to us till we suffer some such loss, and every such loss is a transfer of so much of our hearts and hopes to the next; and they who live long enough to see most of their friends go before them feel that they have more to recover by death than to lose by it. This is not the mere speculation of a mind at ease. Almost all who were about me in my childhood have been removed. I have brothers, sisters, friends, father, mother, and child, in another state of existence; and assuredly I regard death with very different feelings from what I should have done if none of my affections were fixed beyond the grave. To dwell upon the circumstances which, in this case, lessen the evil of separation would be idle; at present you acknowledge, and in time you will feel them."

"Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; but 'tis the happy that have called thee so."

"Thou hast confessions to listen, and bells to christen, and altars and dolls to dress; and fools to coax, and sinners to hoax, and beads and bones to bless; and great pardons to sell for those who pay well, and small ones for those who pay less."

"Though looks and words, by the strong mastery of his practiced will, are overruled, the mounting blood betrays an impulse in its secret spring too deep for his control."

"Three things a wise man will not trust, The wind, the sunshine of an April day, And woman's plighted faith."

"Tis a history Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale ? Which children, open-ey'd and mouth'd, devour; And thus as garrulous ignorance relates, We learn it and believe."

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull, said he, who fell in the great victory."

"To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible."

"Twas a light that made Darkness itself appear A thing of comfort."

"Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to express their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest themselves of fear. From the nature of the human mind this might be presumed, and in fact it is so. They may deaden the heart and stupefy the conscience, but they cannot destroy the imaginative faculty."

"Voltaire and Wesley were ? of the same generation; they were contemporaries through a longer course of time [than Luther and Loyola]; and the influences which they exercised upon their age and upon posterity have not been less remarkably opposed. While the one was scattering, with pestilent activity, the seeds of immorality and unbelief, the other, with equally unweariable zeal, laboured in the cause of religious enthusiasm. The works of Voltaire have found their way wherever the French language is read; the disciples of Wesley, wherever the English is spoken. The principles of the archinfidel were more rapid in their operation: he who aimed at no such evil as that which he contributed so greatly to bring about, was himself startled at their progress: in his latter days he trembled at the consequences which he then foresaw; and indeed his remains had scarcely mouldered in the grave before those consequences brought down the whole fabric of government in France, overturned her altars, subverted her throne, carried guilt, devastation, and misery into every part of his own country, and shook the rest of Europe like an earthquake. Wesley?s doctrines, meantime, were slowly and gradually winning their way; but they advanced every succeeding year with accelerated force, and their effect must ultimately be more extensive, more powerful, and more permanent; for he has set mightier principles at work?. The Emperor Charles V. and his rival of France appear at this day infinitely insignificant, if we compare them with Luther and Loyola; and there may come a time when the name of Wesley will be more generally known, and in remoter regions of the globe, than that of Frederic or of Catherine. For the works of such men survive them, and continue to operate when nothing remains of worldly ambition but the memory of its vanity and its guilt."

"What a world were this, How unendurable its weight, if they Whom Death hath sundered did not meet again!"

"What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails, and such are little boys made of."

"What are young women made of? Sugar and spice and all things nice, and such are young women made of."

"What blockheads are those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads!"

"What will not woman, gentle woman dare, when strong affection stirs her spirit up?"

"Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character. Our home, our birth-place, our native land,?think for awhile what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words, and if you have any intellectual eyes you will then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism. Show me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will show you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice: you have no hold on a human being whose affections are without a tap-root. The laws recognize this truth in the privileges they confer upon freeholders; and public opinion acknowledges it also in the confidence which it reposes upon those who have what is called a stake in the country. Vagabond and rogue are convertible terms; and with how much propriety may any one understand who knows what are the habits of the wandering classes, such as gipsies, tinkers, and potters."

"Where Washington hath left his awful memory a light for after times!"

"Whoever has tasted the breath of morning, knows that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of the day are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of nature that we should enjoy and profit by them. Children awake early, and would be up and stirring long before the arrangements of the family permit them to use their limbs. We are thus broken in from childhood to an injurious habit: that habit might be shaken off with more ease than it was first imposed. We rise with the sun at Christmas; it were continuing so to do till the middle of April, and without any perceptible change we should find ourselves then rising at five o?clock, till which hour we might continue till September, and then accommodate ourselves again to the change of season."

"Wild dreams! but such as Plato lov'd; such as with holy zeal our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes! Awhile from man with-held, even to the latter days? and all things be fulfill'd."

"Will ye believe the wonders of the ocean? how its shoals sprang from the wave, like flashing light; .. took wing, and, twinkling with a silver glitterance, flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they to sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam, following like fowlers, with uplifted eye, their falling quarry... language cannot paint their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen, blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue, in all its rich variety of shades, suffus'd with glowing gold."

"Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed; if well disposed, only more unhappy."