Great Throughts Treasury

"We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it." - Carlo Goldoni

"It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure." -

"Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person’s very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life." -

"Politicians... rise predominantly from... the "lower middle class"; most are self-made men... ; most depend on their political jobs for their livelihood and most have little time, inclination, or opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness." - John Gunther

"The greatest things ever done on earth have been done little by little." - Thomas Guthrie

"But it is not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work. That is always boring in the long run, and it has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is ever laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is to be educated." - Edith Hamilton

"Men as yet need some help to their imagination. There remains still room for a little illusion. It is better for men, it is better for women, that each somewhat idealize the other. Much is lost when life has lost its atmosphere, and is reduced to naked fact." - Gail Hamilton, Pseud. of Mary A. Dodge

"To leave is to die a little; it is to die to what one loves. One leaves behind a little of oneself at any hour, any place." - Edmond Haraucourt

"Curiosity is little more than another name for hope." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

"Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more." - E. Roland Harriman, born Edward Roland Noel Harriman, aka "Bunny"

"It is the individual who knows how little he knows about himself who stands a chance of finding something about himself before he dies." - S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa

"Happiness doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel towards what we have. We can be happy with little or miserable with much." - William D. Hoard, fully William Dempster Hoard

"Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well." - Henry Scott Holland

"There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man’s life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centers of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold and darkness." -

"Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief of a large one." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Of the systems above us, angelic and seraphic, we know little; but we see one law, simple, efficient, and comprehensive as that of gravitation - the law of love, extending its sway over the whole of God’s dominions, living where He lives, embracing every moral movement in its ;universal authority, and producing the same harmony, where it is obeyed as we observe in the movements of nature." -

"Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Even as we speak, jealous time flees - seize this day, and put little faith in tomorrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"He is always a slave who cannot live on a little." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Mingle a little folly with your wisdom; a little nonsense now and then is pleasant." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"Seize the present; trust the future as little as you may... or... Sieze the day, with little trust in tomorrow (Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.)" - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"The external part of religion is doubtless of little value in comparison with the internal, and so is the cask in comparison with the wine contained in it: but if the cask be staved in, the wine must perish." - George Horne

"‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter... In short, a passion must be accompany’d with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then ‘tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment." - David Hume

"Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children." - David Hume

"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten - who bends to the storm? He will do little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of man never fails." - William Morris Hunt

"Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much, says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them." - Washington Irving

"I hope always, I desire much, I expect little." - Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Jabotinsky

"Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." - William James

"I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness and of their souls’ resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream." - William James

"Our minds grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew." - William James

"A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." - Thomas Jefferson

"He who knows most knows best how little he knows." - Thomas Jefferson

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in the punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." - Thomas Jefferson

"Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick-chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal being finds nothing left behind him but the consciousness of innocence." -

"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, through it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place." -

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to see happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove." -

"There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." -

"Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?" - Pope Julius III, born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte NULL

"The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into the cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"I am old enough to see how little I have done in so much time, and how much I have to do in so little time." - Sheila Kaye-Smith

"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little." -

"Don't knock your competitors. By boosting others you will boost yourself. A little competition is a good thing and severe competition is a blessing." -

"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what you respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." - Charles Kingsley

"Make a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say: "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or at least a little better this day."" - Charles Kingsley

"Victory is not won in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more." - Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour

"There is not one grain the universe, either too much or too little, nothing to be added, nothing to be spared; nor so much as any one particle of it, that mankind may not be either the better or the worse for according as it is applied." - Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

"So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men." - Charles Lamb