Great Throughts Treasury

"One is not born wise, but becomes wise."

"Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another."

"Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does."

"Out of the frying pan into the fire."

"Power will not be feared, unless it is just and regular, although it may possibly be loved even when corrupt: for it is by allurement that it stands, not by authority; by flattery, not by proper influence. And what can be more direct flattery than not to punish sins?"

"Patience ornaments the woman and proves the man."

"One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man."

"Reason without goodness is not reason, and goodness without reason is not goodness."

"Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason — nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All, therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world."

"Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder"

"See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death."

"The entire fruit is already present in the seed."

"The first reaction to truth is hatred"

"The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'"

"Surely it is obvious enough, if one looks at the whole world, that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully peopled than anciently. All places are now accessible, all are well known, all open to commerce; most pleasant farms have obliterated all traces of what were once dreary and dangerous wastes; cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks and herds have expelled wild beasts; sandy deserts are sown; rocks are planted; marshes are drained; and where once were hardly solitary cottages, there are now large cities. No longer are (savage) islands dreaded, nor their rocky shores feared; everywhere are houses, and inhabitants, and settled government, and civilized life. What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race. ."

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church"

"That is tacitly permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of vengeance."

"There is a wide enough difference between the honour due to time, and religion. Let Custom show fidelity to Time, Nature to God."

"The nature of rumor is known to all."

"The truth is, the human race has always deserved ill at God's hand. First of all, as undutiful to Him, because when it knew Him in part, it not only did not seek after Him, but even invented other gods of its own to worship; and further, because, as the result of their willing ignorance of the Teacher of righteousness, the Judge and Avenger of sin, all vices and crimes grew and flourished."

"The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain."

"There is no public entertainment which does not inflict spiritual damage."

"There is power also in brevity."

"There is no public spectacle without violence to the spirit."

"There is no spectacle without violent agitation of the soul."

"There is strife between God's ways and human ways: damned by you, we are absolved by God"

"They converse as those who know that God hears."

"Truth engenders hatred of truth. As soon as it appears, it is the enemy."

"Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading."

"Truth does not blush."

"They eagerly seize a name of so great goodness to apply it to foul practices."

"We are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to think ill of all men. The thing we must not do to an emperor, we must not do to anyone else."

"Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not."

"We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all the places that belong to you — cities, islands, forts, towns, exchanges; the military camps themselves, tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, the market-place; we have left you nothing but your temples."

"What difference is there between provoker and provoked, except that the former is detected as prior in evil-doing, but the latter as posterior? Yet each stands impeached of hurting a man in the eye of the Lord, who both prohibits and condemns every wickedness. In evil doing there is no account taken of order, nor does place separate what similarity conjoins. And the precept is absolute, that evil is not to be repaid with evil. Like deed involves like merit."

"We live among you, eat the same food, wear the same clothes . . . We sojourn with you in the world, renouncing neither forum nor market, nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn . . . We till the ground with you, we join with you in business ventures."

"We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in union; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal."

"What I have now done is only a little sport before the real combat. I have rather indicated the wounds that might be given you than inflicted any. If the reader has met with passages which have excited his risibility, he must ascribe this to the subjects themselves. There are many things which deserve to be held up in this way to ridicule and mockery, lest, by a serious refutation, we should attach a weight to them which they do not deserve. Nothing is more due to vanity than laughter; and it is the Truth properly that has a right to laugh, because she is cheerful, and to make sport of her enemies, because she is sure of the victory. Care must be taken, indeed, that the raillery is not too low, and unworthy of the truth; but, keeping this in view, when ridicule may be employed with effect, it is a duty to avail ourselves of it... To treat them seriously would be to sanction them."

"What is belief in the resurrection, unless believing it entire? For if the flesh is to be restored from dissolution, much more will it be recalled from discomfort. Greater things prescribe the rule for the lesser. Is not the amputation or the crippling of any member the death of that member? If general death is rescinded by resurrection, what of partial death? If we are changed into glory, how much more into health. The defects that accrue to bodies are an accident: their integrity is a property. In the latter we are born. Even if we are crippled in the womb, this happens to one who is already man: the species is there before the accident. As life is given us by God, so also is it given again: as we were when we received it, so are we also when we receive it back. Our restoration is a gift to nature, not to injury: we live again as what we are born, not as what damage makes us."

"Whatever the sea has washed away, the heaven burned down, the earth undermined, the sword shorn down, reappears at some other time by the turn of compensation."

"When God's Spirit descends, then Patience accompanies Him indivisibly."

"Who will fear to squander what he has the power of afterwards recovering?"

"When you express approval of a god who is no judge, it is not the God who is a judge whom you express disapproval of: you will be forced, no question of it, to lay accusation against justice itself - for this it is that causes any man to be a judge - classing it as one of the varieties of evil: which means you will have to include injustice among the subheadings of goodness. Justice is an evil thing only if injustice is a good one."

"Wide are men’s inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about conjectures."

"You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine."

"Written as with a sunbeam."

"You are the doorway of the devil."

"You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing."