Great Throughts Treasury

"Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion."

"All the wonders you seek are within yourself."

"A sick man’s sacrifice is but a lame oblation."

"And first Satan's endeavours have ever been, and they cease not yet to instill a belief in the minde of man, There is no God at all. . . . that the necessity of his entity dependeth upon ours, and is but a Politicall Chymera. . . . Where he succeeds not thus high, he labours to introduce a secondary and deductive Atheisme; that although, men concede there is a God, yet . . . that he intendeth only the care of the species or common natures, but letteth loose the guard of individuals, and single existencies therein: That he looks not below the Moon, but hath designed the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferiour deputations. To promote which apprehensions or empuzzell their due conceptions, he casteth in the notions of fate, destiny, fortune, chance and necessity. . . . Whereby extinguishing in mindes the compensation of vertue and vice, the hope and fear of heaven or hell; they comply in their actions unto the drift of his delusions. . . ."

"Every man acts truly so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties in himself."

"Every man’s own reason is his best Œdipus."

"Festination may prove Precipitation;"

"Futurity still shortens, and time present sucks in time to come."

"He honours God that imitates Him."

"He who must needs have company must needs have sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone; lose not the advantage of solitude and the society of thyself; nor be only content but delight to be alone and single with Omnipotency. He who is thus prepared, the day is not uneasy, nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of himself."

"Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it."

"I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms."

"It in the common wonder of all men among so many millions of faces there should be none alike."

"It is a brave act of valor to condemn death, but where life is more terrible than death it is then the truest valor to dare to live."

"Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Cæsar within thyself."

"Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible."

"Nature is not at variance with Art, nor Art with Nature, they both being servants of His Providence. Art is the perfection of Nature... Nature is the Art of God."

"No man can judge another, because no man knows himself."

"No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another."

"Rest not in an ovation, but in a triumph over thy passions."

"Since not only judgments have their awards, but mercies their commissions, snatch not at every favour, nor think thyself passed by if they fall upon thy neighbour."

"That which the sun doth not now see will be visible when the sun is out, and the stars are fallen from heaven."

"Many from the ignorance of these Maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth: A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and"

"Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose."

"Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony."

"Sleep is death’s younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers."

"The voice of prophecies is like that of whispering-places; they who are near hear nothing, those at the first extremity will know all."

"The world, which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make out."

"The world is not an inn, but a hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in."

"There is no darkness unto the conscience, which can see without light."

"There is a rabble amongst the gentry as well as the commonalty; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves in the same wheel with the others,—men in the same level with mechanics, though their fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their follies."

"They do most by books who could do much without them; and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself is the substantial man."

"There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him."

"Think not thy own shadow longer than that of others."

"This I think charity—to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God."

"True fame is ever likened to our shade, he sooneth misseth her, that most (haste) hath made to overtake her; whoso takes his wing, regardless of her, she’ll be following; her true proprietie she thus discovers, loves her contemners, and contemns her lovers."

"Tranquility is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure."

"When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids."

"When I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into accounting the Finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself."

"When Nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on; and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high."

"We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleep; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleep."