Great Throughts Treasury

"But in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?"

"But no matter how high in the clouds this arrow of pride may fly, and no matter how exuberant one may feel while being carried up so high, let us remember that the lightest of these arrows still has a heavy iron head. High as it may fly, therefore, it inevitably has to come down and hit the ground. And sometimes it lands in a not very clean place."

"But to return to their manner of living in society: the oldest man of every family, as has been already said, is its governor; wives serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always the younger serves the elder."

"But what they find most amazing and despicable is the insanity of those who all but worship the rich, to whom they owe nothing and who can do them no harm; they do so for no other reason except that they are rich, knowing full well that they are so mean and tightfisted that they will certainly never give them one red cent during their whole lives."

"By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life."

"By reason of gifts and bribes the offices be given to rich men, which should rather have been executed by wise men."

"Came but for friendship, and took away love."

"Come when you're looked for, or come without warning;"

"Come, come, said Tom's father, at your time of life, there's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake - It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife - Why, so it is, father - whose wife shall I take?"

"Could necessity infallibly produce quarries of stone, which are the materials of all magnificent structures?"

"Disguise our bondage as we will, 'tis woman, woman, rules us still"

"Divers heads, divers wits."

"Divine Providence has spread her table everywhere, not with a juiceless green carpet, but with succulent herbage and nourishing grass, upon which most beasts feed."

"Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal."

"Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities - that's training or instruction - but is rather making visible what is hidden as a seed."

"Either it's a bad thing to enjoy life, in other words, to experience pleasure - in which case you shouldn't help anyone to do it, but should try to save the whole human race from such a frightful fate - or else, if it's good for other people, and you're not only allowed, but positively obliged to make it possible for them, why shouldn't charity begin at home?"

"Eve, with all the fruits of Eden blest, save only one, rather than leave that one unknown, lost all the rest."

"Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence."

"Every tribulation whichever comes our way either is sent to be medicinal, if we will take it as such, or may become medicinal, if we will make it such, or is better than medicinal, unless we forsake it."

"Extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion."

"Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul."

"Fanatic faith, once wedded fast to some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."

"Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world."

"Fond memory brings the light of other days around me."

"For as love is oftentimes won with beauty, so it is not kept, preserved, and continued, but by virtue and obedience."

"For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them."

"For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust."

"For most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace; and in these I neither have any knowledge, nor do I much desire it; they are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than on governing well those they possess."

"For the springs of both good and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as from a lasting fountain."

"For the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of a nation can be called a peace)."

"For things will never be perfect, until human beings are perfect - which I don't expect them to be for quite a number of years!"

"For this is one of the ancientest laws among them; that no man shall be blamed for reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion."

"For what justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendor upon what is so ill acquired, and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labors so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs?"

"For when they see the people swarm into the streets, and daily wet to the skin with rain, and yet cannot persuade them to go out of the rain, they do keep themselves within their houses, seeing they cannot remedy the folly of the people."

"For your lords are readier to feed idle people than to take care of the sick; and often the heir is not able to keep together so great a family as his predecessor did."

"Fortune doth both raise up the low and pluck down the high."

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

"God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind."

"God said, Thou shalt not kill - does the theft of a little money make it quite all right for us to do so? If it's said that this commandment applies only to illegal killing, what's to prevent human beings from similarly agreeing among themselves to legalize certain types of rape, adultery, or perjury? Considering that God has forbidden us even to kill ourselves, can we really believe that purely human arrangements for the regulation of mutual slaughter are enough, without any divine authority, to exempt executioners from the sixth commandment? Isn't that like saying that this particular commandment has no more validity than human laws allow it? - in which case the principle can be extended indefinitely, until in all spheres of life human beings decide just how far God's commandments may conveniently be observed."

"He should, as he list, be able to prove the moon made of grene cheese."

"He spinneth that fine lie with flax, fetching it out of his own body, as the spider spinneth her cobweb."

"He that biddeth other folk do well, and giveth evil example with the contrary deed himself, fareth even like a foolish weaver, that would weave a part with his one hand and unweave a part with his other."

"He travels best that knows when to return."

"He will bring forth for the plain proof his old three worshipful witnesses, which stand yet all unsworn, that is to wit: Some-say, and They-say, and Folk-say."

"Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

"Heretics be they that obstinately hold any self-minded opinion contrary to the doctrine that the common known Catholic Church teacheth and holdeth for necessary to salvation."

"How can anyone be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep."

"Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot"

"I confess, without taking it quite away, those pressures that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter, but they can never be quite removed; for if laws were made to determine at how great an extent in soil, and at how much money, every man must stop?to limit the prince, that he might not grow too great; and to restrain the people, that they might not become too insolent?and that none might factiously aspire to public employments, which ought neither to be sold nor made burdensome by a great expense, since otherwise those that serve in them would be tempted to reimburse themselves by cheats and violence, and it would become necessary to find out rich men for undergoing those employments, which ought rather to be trusted to the wise."