Great Throughts Treasury

"Quit not the world out of any hypocrisy, sullenness, or superstition, but out of a sincere love of true knowledge and virtue."

"Reason directs us to keep our minds as free from passion and as cheerful as we can, and that we should consider ourselves as bound by the ties of good-nature and humanity to use our utmost endeavours to help forward the happiness of all other persons..."

"Reason is by study, labor, and exercise of logic, philosophy, and other liberal arts corroborate [i.e., strengthened] and quickened; and the judgment both in them and also in orators, laws, and stories [is] much ripened. And although poets are with many men taken but for painted words, yet do they much help the judgment, and make a man among other things well furnished in one special thing, without which all learning is half lame?a good mother wit."

"Reckless youth makes rueful age."

"Remorse is beholding heaven and feeling hell."

"Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames."

"Sad, indeed, is the spectacle of the youth idling away the springtime of his existence, and not only losing the sweet benefit of time, but wasting, in the formation of evil habits, those hours in which he might clothe himself with angel-like perfection."

"See me safe up: for in my coming down, I can shift for myself. [On ascending the platform to his execution]"

"See! the sun himself! on wings of glory up the East he springs. - Angel of light, who from the time the heavens began their march sublime, hath, first of all the starry choir, trod in his maker's steps of fire."

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, and lovers are round her, sighing: but coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, for her heart in his grave is lying."

"Show the sun with a lantern."

"Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit, but the trail of the serpent is over them all!"

"Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance."

"Soul appears when we make room for it."

"Study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance."

"Sweet is the dream, divinely sweet,"

"Tell me, what's love? Said youth, one day, to drooping age, who crost his way, it is a sunny hour of play, for which repentance dear doth pay, repentance! Repentance! And this is love, as wise men say."

"That happy minglement of hearts, where, changed as chemic compounds are, each with its own existence parts, to find a new one, happier far!"

"The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests."

"The change of the word does not alter the matter"

"The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck."

"The chief, and almost the only, business of the Syphogrants is to take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow his trade diligently; yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden, which as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians: but they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o?clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man?s discretion; yet they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading."

"The Christian religion, rightly understood, is the deepest and choicest piece of philosophy that is."

"The clearness of my conscience has made my heart hop for joy."

"The devil - the prowde spirit - cannot endure to be mocked"

"The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions."

"The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and silver because of their scarcity; whereas, on the contrary, it is their opinion that Nature, as an indulgent parent, has freely given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and useless."

"The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed, now hangs as mute as Tara's walls as if that soul were fled."

"The heart that has truly loved never forgets but as truly loves on to the close."

"The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touched by the thorns."

"The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness."

"The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck."

"The last rose of summer left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone."

"The leaving him thus did not a little gratify one that was more fond of travelling than of returning home to be buried in his own country; for he used often to say, that the way to heaven was the same from all places, and he that had no grave had the heavens still over him."

"The light, that lies in woman's eyes, has been my heart's undoing."

"The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labor, since the chief end of the constitution is to regulate labor by the necessities of the public, and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists."

"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."

"The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone, in the ranks of death you'll find him; his father's sword he has girded on, and his wild harp slung behind him."

"The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace."

"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."

"The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments, or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corncarried before him; as the high priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a wax light."

"The rich do not breed cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean and at low prices; and, after they have fattened them on their grounds, sell them again at high rates."

"The servant may not look to be in better case than his master."

"The state of things and the dispositions of men were then such, that a man could not well tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear."

"The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them Neighbors; but those to whom they have been of more particular service, Friends; and as all other nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any state. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties."

"The Utopians detest war as a very brutal thing: and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practiced by men than any sort of beasts; and they, against the custom of almost all other nations, think there is nothing more inglorious than that glory which is gained by war. They would be both troubled and ashamed of a bloody victory over their enemies; and in no victory do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good conduct, without bloodshed."

"The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable."

"The Utopians have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off many delays and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labor under a vast load of laws."

"The Utopians marvel that any mortal can take pleasure in the weak sparkle of a little gem or bright pebble, when he has a star, or the sun itself, to look at. They are amazed at the foolishness of any man who considers himself a nobler fellow because he wears clothing of specially fine wool. No matter how delicate the thread, they say, a sheep wore it once, and still was nothing but a sheep? They do not understand why a dunderhead with no more brains than a post, and who is as depraved as he is foolish, should command a great many wise and good people simply because he happens to have a great pile of gold."

"The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread: for how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it."