Great Throughts Treasury

"Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true."

"Shaking off, with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy."

"Starting in a hollowed log of wood - some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself 'Why?' and the only echo is 'damned fool!... the Devil drives'."

"Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder."

"Th' immortal mind of mortal man! we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic I. Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene."

"That creatures endowed with the mere possibility of liberty should not always choose the Good appears natural. But that of the milliards of human beings who have inhabited Earth, not one should have been found invariably to choose Good, proves how insufficient is the solution. Hence no one believes in the existence of the complete man under the present state of things. The Haji rejects all popular and mythical explanation by the Fall of Adam, the innate depravity of human nature, and the absolute perfection of certain Incarnations, which argues their divinity. He can only wail over the prevalence of evil, assume its foundation to be error, and purpose to abate it by uprooting that Ignorance which bears and feeds it."

"The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own."

"The Hâjî regrets the excessive importance attached to a possible future state: he looks upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day dream, whose revulsion and reaction disorder waking life. The condition may appear humble and prosaic to those exalted by the fumes of Fancy, by a spiritual dram-drinking which, like the physical, is the pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too wise to affirm or to deny the existence of another world. For life beyond the grave there is no consensus of mankind… Even the instinctive sense of our kind is here dumb. We may believe what we are taught: we can know nothing. He would, therefore, cultivate that receptive mood which, marching under the shadow of mighty events, leads to the highest of goals, — the development of Humanity. With him suspension of judgment is a system."

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself"

"The Pilgrim's sole consolation is in self-cultivation, and in the pleasures of the affections. This sympathy may be an indirect self-love, a reflection of the light of egotism: still it is so transferred as to imply a different system of convictions. It requires a different name: to call benevolence self-love is to make the fruit or flower not only depend upon a root for development (which is true), but the very root itself (which is false). And, finally, his ideal is of the highest: his praise is reserved for: —Lives Lived in obedience to the inner law Which cannot alter."

"The Schedule of Doctrines of the most liberal Christian Church insists upon human depravity, and the absolute need of the Holy Spirit's agency in man's regeneration and sanctification."

"The thoroughbred wanderer"

"The wise do not argue therefrom, that the desires of the woman, as long as she is young and strong, are not as real and urgent of those of the man."

"There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began."

"There is no Heav'en, there is no Hell; these be the dreams of baby minds, Tools of the wily Fetisheer, to 'fright the fools his cunning blinds. Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell; In Life to find thy hell and heav'en as thou abuse or use it well."

"They lard their lean books with the fat of others work."

"'Tis blessed to believe; you say: The saying may be true enow and it can add to Life a light: — only remains to show us how."

"Travelers, like poets, are mostly an angry race: by falling into a daily fit of passion, I proved to the governor and his son, who were profuse in their attentions, that I was in earnest."

"Tush! quoth the Zahid, well we ken the teaching of the school abhorr'd That maketh man automaton, mind a secretion, soul a word. Of molecules and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; Of jelly-speck development and apes that grew to man's estate. Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law; — Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe? Is not the highest honour his who from the worst hath drawn the best; May not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His hest? Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand: Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand."

"What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain, when realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?"

"What is the Truth? was askt of yore. Reply all object Truth is one as twain of halves aye makes a whole; the moral Truth for all is none."

"What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest, strongest eye, we know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die."

"When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng? Who save the madman dares to cry: 'Tis I am right, you all are wrong? You all are right, you all are wrong, we hear the careless Soofi say, For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day. Thy faith why false, my faith why true? 'tis all the work of Thine and Mine, The fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine. Cease then to mumble rotten bones; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood The skel'eton; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good."

"When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk."

"Wherever we halted we were surrounded by wandering troops of Bedouins."

"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born;Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn. Safely he jogs along the way which Golden Mean the sages call; Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall."

"With God's foreknowledge man's free will! what monster-growth of human brain, what powers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?"

"Words, words that gender things! The soul is a new-comer on the scene; Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine? The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run; What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun: Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes; Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies: No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity; And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see."

"Yes Truth may be, but 'tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There, But Where nor I nor you can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare. Enough to think that Truth can be: come sit we where the roses glow, Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow.'"

"Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defined,What your five wits may wot ye weet; what is you please to dub designíd; You bring down Heavíen to vulgar Earth; your maker like yourselves you make, You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break; You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be, That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of law to see?"

""Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key;" so spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven, ? he."

""Faith mountains move" I hear: I see the practice of the world unheed the foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that serves our vanity to feed. "Faith stands unmoved"; and why? Because man's silly fancies still remain, and will remain till wiser man the day-dreams of his youth disdain."

""Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim o do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!"

""Reason and Instinct!" How we love to play with words that please our pride; our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide! For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain, from Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein."

""Th' immortal mind of mortal man!" we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I." Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in small-skulled idiot poor and mean; in sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead when Death lets drop the scene."

""Tush!" quoth the Zahid, "well we ken the teaching of the school abhorr'd "That maketh man automaton, mind a secretion, soul a word." "Of molecules and protoplasm you matter-mongers prompt to prate; "Of jelly-speck development and apes that grew to man's estate." Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law; ? Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe?"

""Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born; "Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn." Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call; Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall."

"Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary, where live his little span of life secure? And 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?"

"Between 2 and 3 in the morning of the 19th inst. I was aroused by the cry that the enemy was upon us."

"Broke is a temporary condition; poor is a state of mind."

"HƒjŒ Abd– has been known to me for more years than I care to record. A native, it is believed, of Dƒrabghird in the Yezd Province, he always preferred to style himself El-Hichmakani, a facetious "lackab" or surname, meaning "Of No-hall, Nowhere." He had travelled far and wide with his eyes open; as appears by his "couplets.""

"Haply the Law that rules the world allows to man the widest range; and haply Fate's a Theist-word, subject to human chance and change. This "I" may find a future Life, a nobler copy of our own, where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every knowledge shall be known; where 'twill be man's to see the whole of what on Earth he sees in part; where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought; nor hope defer'd shall hurt the heart."

"His "eschatology," like that of the Soofis generally, is vague and shadowy."

"Home is where the books are."

"I have struggled for forty-seven years, distinguishing myself honorably in every way that I possibly could. I never had a compliment, nor a "thank you," nor a single farthing. I translate a doubtful book in my old age, and I immediately make sixteen thousand guineas. Now that I know the tastes of England, we need never be without money."

"I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information."

"Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know."

"Is not the highest honor his who from the worst hath drawn the best; may not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His hest? Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand: cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand."

"Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell; in Life to find thy hell and heav'en as thou abuse or use it well."

"Shahrazad had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."