Great Throughts Treasury

"We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting."

"All err the more dangerously because each follows the truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth."

"Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted."

"Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?"

"Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary."

"Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good."

"For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal, whatever may be its nature; and that thus all our actions and thoughts must take such different directions, according to the state of that eternity, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that pint which ought to be our ultimate end."

"Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself."

"Few friendships would endure if each party knew what his friend said about him in his absence, even when speaking sincerely and dispassionately."

"Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison."

"Faith affirms many things, respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing that they deny. It is superior, but never opposed to their testimony."

"God regards only the inward; the Church judges only by the outward. god absolves as soon as He sees penitence in the heart; the church when she sees it in works."

"Geometry supposes... that we know what thing is meant by the words: motion, number, space and without stopping uselessly to define them it penetrates their nature and lays bare their marvelous properties."

"Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known."

"He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years ago. I quite believe it. She is no longer the same, not is he. He was young, and she also; she is quite different. He would perhaps love her yet, if she were what she was then."

"I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise."

"If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us. We are therefore incapable of knowing either what he is or whether he is. That being so, who would dare to attempt to answer the question? Certainly not we, who bear no relation to him."

"If we subject everything to reason, our religion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous."

"If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others."

"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world."

"It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist."

"Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable."

"It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!"

"In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious."

"Let a man choose what condition he will, and let him accumulate around him all the goods and gratifications seemingly calculated to make him happy in it; if that man is left any time without occupation or amusement, and reflects on what he is, the meager, languid felicity of his present lot will not bear him up. He will turn necessarily to gloomy anticipations of the future; and unless his occupation calls him out of himself, he is inevitably wretched."

"It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason."

"Little things console us, because little things afflict us."

"Love has no age, as it is always renewing itself."

"Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live."

"Man is but a reed, the feeblest of Nature's growths, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him; a breath, a drop of water, may prove fatal. But were the universe to kill him, he would still be more noble than his slayer; for man knows that he is crushed, but the universe does not know that it crushes him."

"Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, in order to show that she is only His image."

"Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master; the root, the branch, the fruits - the principles, the consequences."

"Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image."

"Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true. Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man; lovable because it promises the true good."

"One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another."

"Not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but also the blindness of those who seek Him not."

"Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority have established this."

"No animal admires another animal."

"Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other."

"Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity; to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside."

"Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents."

"Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys."

"Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will."

"Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may be talked of."

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

"The great intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men."

"Reason command us far more imperiously than a master; in disobeying the former, fools."

"Religion is suited to all kinds of minds. Some pay attention only to its establishment, and this religion is such that its very establishment suffices to prove its truth. Others trace it even to the apostles. The more learned go back to the beginning of the world. The angels see it better still, and from a more distant time."

"The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool."

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."