Great Throughts Treasury

"A good conscience enlists a multitude of friends; a bad conscience is distressed and anxious, even when alone."

"A good mind possesses a kingdom: a great fortune is a great slavery."

"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life."

"All ferocity is born from weakness."

"Calamity is virtue’s opportunity."

"Disaster is Virtue’s opportunity."

"Everything may happen."

"Eternity consists of opposites."

"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones."

"He is most powerful who has power over himself."

"For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts."

"Happiness is founded upon virtue."

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."

"If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There’s no delight in owning anything unshared."

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."

"It is quality rather than quantity that matters."

"It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor."

"Nature’s needs are easily provided and ready to hand. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat."

"Live with men as if God saw you; converse with God as if men heard you."

"No gratitude is felt for a benefit when it has lingered long in the hands of him who gives it, when the giver has seemed sorry to let it go, and has given it with the air of one who was robbing himself."

"Most people are angry with the sinner, not the sin."

"Nothing… refreshes and aids a sick man so much as the affection of his friends."

"No man can swim ashore and take his baggage with him."

"Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer much more in apprehension than in reality."

"Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it."

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

"Prosperity does not exalt the wise man, nor does adversity cast him down."

"The more the mind receives, the more does it expand."

"That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity."

"The primary indication… of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company."

"The soul is master of every kind of fortune: itself acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery."

"The wish for healing has ever been the half of health."

"There is no favorable wind without direction."

"What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more."

"Time, Nature’s great healer."

"We are made not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?… Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out."

"When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. "

"Who makes a timid request invites denial."

"What you think of yourself is much more important than what others think of you."

"Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness."

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death?s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it... Life is long if you know how to use it."

"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune?s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately."

"You are living as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don?t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply ? though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire... How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!"

"A benefit consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer."

"A benefit is estimated according to the mind of the giver."

"A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it."

"A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty."

"A crowd of fellow-sufferers is a miserable kind of comfort."

"A dwarf is small even if he stands on a mountain; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well."

"A foolishness is inflicted with a hatred of itself."