Great Throughts Treasury

"A crown! what is it? It is to bear the miseries of a people, to hear their murmurs, feel their discontents, and sink beneath a load of splendid care."

"A life devoted to trifles, not only takes away the inclination, but the capacity for higher pursuits."

"A small unkindness is a great offence."

"Adulation is the death of virtue. Who flatters, is, of all mankind, the lowest, save he who courts flattery."

"Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed."

"Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains."

"Rage is for little wrongs; despair is dumb."

"Since trifles make the sum of human things, and half our misery from our foibles springs; since life’s best joys consist in peace and ease, and few can save or serve, but all may please; Oh! let th’ ungentle spirit learn from hence a small unkindness is a great offense, large bounties to restore we wish in vain, but all may shun the guilt of giving pain."

"The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and number. So blinded are we to our passions, that we suffer more to insure perdition than salvation."

"The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion - makes the thought start into instant action, and at once plans and performs,"

"How goodness heightens beauty!"

"Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it."

"Love never reasons, but profusely gives; gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles then lest it has done too little."

"He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself."

"Life is a short day; but it is a working-day. Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good."

"Method is the hinge of business, and there is no method without order and punctuality."

"How short is human life; the very breath, which frames my words, accelerates my death."

"My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worse. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it."

"Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor His infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants."

"Perish discretion when it interferes with duty."

"Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul."

"Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure."

"We have employment assigned to us for every circumstance in life. When we are alone, we have our thoughts to watch; in the family, our tempers; and in company, our tongues."

"Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains."

"The secret heart is devotion's temple; there the saint lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen but not unaccepted."

"Wisdom views with an indifferent eye all finite joys, all blessings born to die."

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."

"Depart from discretion when it interferes with duty. "

"Forgiveness is the economy of the heart. Forgiveness saves expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. "

"It's cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, and the waste of spirit."

"Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains."

"Goals help you overcome short-term problems. "