Great Throughts Treasury

"Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open enemies."

"This is one of the sad conditions of life, that experience is not transmissible. No man will learn from the suffering of another; he must suffer himself."

"Sensual pleasures are like soap bubbles, sparkling effervescent. The pleasures of intellect are calm, beautiful, sublime and ever enduring."

"Lost time is never found again."

"A cheerful spirit is one of the most valuable gifts ever bestowed upon humanity by a kind Creator. It is the sweetest and most fragrant flower of the Spirit, that constantly sends out its beauty and fragrance, and blesses everything within its reach. It will sustain the soul in the darkest and most dreary places of this world. It will hold in check the demons of despair, and stifle the power of discouragement and hopelessness. It is the brightest star that ever cast its radiance over the darkened soul, and one that seldom sets in the gloom of morbid fancies and forboding imaginations."

"A little thing will keep them from the house of God who have no desire to go to it."

"A firm faith is the best theology; a good life is the best philosophy; a clear conscience the best law; honesty the best policy, and temperance the best physic."

"A hope unaccompanied with a godly life had better be given up, and the sooner the better; for, if retained, it will prove as a spider?s web when God shall take away the soul."

"As every mercy is a drop obtained from the ocean of God?s goodness, so every affliction is a drachm weighed out in the wisdom of God?s providence."

"Be deaf to the quarrelsome, blind to the scorner and dumb to the inquisitive."

"As a weak limb grows stronger by exercise, so will your faith be strengthened by the very efforts you make in stretching it out toward things unseen."

"Afflictions are but conductors to immortal life and glory."

"All our murmurings are so many arrows shot at God Himself, and they will return upon our own hearts; they reach not Him, but they will hit us; they hurt not Him, but they will wound us; therefore it is better to be mute than to murmur; it is dangerous to provoke a consuming fire."

"Cheerfulness sharpens the edge and removes the rust from the mind. A joyous heart supplies oil to our inward machinery, and makes the whole of our powers work with ease and efficiency; hence it is of the utmost importance that we maintain a contented, cheerful, genial disposition."

"Cheerfulness is the friend and helper of all good graces, and the absence of it is certainly a vice."

"Difficulty excites the mind to the dignity which sustains and finally conquers misfortunes, and the ordeal refines while it chastens."

"Conscience is the voice of God in the soul."

"God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them."

"Five, or six, or ten people shall be made temporarily wretched because one person, unconsciously perhaps, yet supremely egotistic and selfish, has never learned to control his disposition and bridle his tongue."

"Faith without evidence is, properly, not faith, but prejudice or presumption; faith beyond evidence is superstition, and faith contrary to evidence is either insanity or willful perversity of mind."

"Do daily and hourly your duty; do it patiently and thoroughly. Do it as it presents itself; do it at the moment, and let it be its own reward. Never mind whether it is known and acknowledged or not, but do not fail to do it."

"God strikes not as an enemy, to destroy; but as a father, to correct."

"God makes crosses of great variety; He makes some of iron and lead, that look as if they must crush; some of straw, that seem so light, and yet are no less difficult to carry; some He makes of precious stones and gold, that dazzle the eye and excite the envy of spectators, but in reality are as well able to crucify as those which are so much dreaded."

"Happiness without peace is temporal; peace along with happiness is eternal."

"He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others or himself."

"Great things are not accomplished by idle dreams, but by years of patient study."

"Good conscience is sometimes sold for money, but never bought with it."

"Happiness and comfort stream immediately from God himself, as light issues from the sun; and sometimes looks and darts itself into the meanest corners, while it forbears to visit the largest and the noblest rooms."

"God?s corrections are our instructions; His lashes our lessons, and His scourges our schoolmasters."

"It is not affliction itself, but affliction rightly borne, that does us good."

"Let not the stream of your life be a murmuring stream."

"He who bears failure with patience is as much of a philosopher as he who succeeds; for to put up with the world needs as much wisdom as to control it."

"Hope is the last lingering light of the human heart. It shines when every other is put out. Extinguish it, and the gloom of affliction becomes the very blackness of darkness?cheerless and impenetrable."

"I have seen many men and women of fashion die, and I never saw one of them die well. The trappings off, there they lay on the tumbled pillow, and there were just two things that bothered them, a wasted life and a coming eternity."

"It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man, that his earthly influence, which has a commencement, will never, through all ages, have an end."

"None should expect to prosper who go out of the way of duty."

"Nothing is eternal but that which is done for God and others. That which is done for self dies."

"It unfortunately happens that no man believes that he is likely to die soon. So everyone is much disposed to defer the consideration of what ought to be done on the supposition of such an emergency; and while nothing is so uncertain as human life, so nothing is so certain as our assurance that we shall survive most of our neighbors."

"It is one of the worst of errors to suppose that there is any other path of safety except that of duty."

"No books are so legible as the lives of men; no character so plain as their moral conduct."

"Many men affect to despise fear, and in preaching resent any appeal to it; but not to fear when there is occasion is as great a weakness as to fear unduly without reason. God implanted fear in the soul as truly as He implanted hope or courage."

"Sensual pleasures are like soap-bubbles, sparkling, evanescent. The pleasures of intellect are calm, beautiful, sublime, ever enduring and climbing upward to the borders of the unseen world."

"Should you suffer your weary soul this day to sink into the arms of that Saviour who rejoices to pardon and is mighty to save, the first entrance of such a word, and the first response of such a faith, would be the date of your better life and the commencement of your union to Christ. The graft has taken. At first the juncture may be very slight?a single thread or fiber?and it is not till you try to part them that you find that they are knit together; that their life is one, and that the force which plucks away the graft must also wound the vine. And your faith may yet be no more than a single filament. It may be only one point of attachment by which you are joined to the Lord Jesus. It may be only one solitary sentence, one isolated invitation or promise, of which you have undoubting hold. But hold it fast. If it be the word of Jesus, cling to it."

"Sorrow comes soon enough without despondency, It does a man no good to carry around a lightning-rod to attract trouble."

"On the head of Christ are many crowns. He wears the crown of victory; He wears the crown of sovereignty; He wears the crown of creation; He wears the crown of providence; He wears the crown of grace; He wears the crown of glory?for every one of His glorified people owes his honor, happiness and blessedness to Him."

"Open your heart to sympathy, but close it against despondency. The flower which opens to receive the dew shuts against the rain."

"One improper word or act will neutralize the effect of many good ones; and one base deed, after years of noble service, will cover them all with shame."

"Palaces and pyramids are reared by laying one brick, or block, at a time; and the kingdom of Christ is enlarged by individual conversions."

"The ability to find fault is believed, by some people, to be a sure sign of great wisdom, when, in most cases, it only indicates narrowness of mind and ill nature."

"The chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex us, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones are let on long leases."