Great Throughts Treasury

"A man of a right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member."

"To rule one’s anger is well; to prevent it is better."

"The material universe exists only in the mind."

"Among the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of His work of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God."

"If any man thinks he can conceive well enough how there should be nothing, I will engage that what he means by nothing is as much something as anything that he ever though of in his life; and I believe that if he know what nothing was, it would be intuitively evident to him that it could not be... Absolute nothing is the aggregate of all the contradictions in the world."

"If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt."

"Of all kind of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are the most important."

"Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men."

"Knowledge is the key that first opens the hard heart, enlarges the affections, and opens the way for men into the kingdom of heaven."

"True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections… the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul."

"True virtue… is that consent, propensity, and union of heart to being in general, which is immediately exercised in a general good-will."

"The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music."

"I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause. "

"Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life."

"True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will."