Great Throughts Treasury

"I am possessed by an inexhaustible passion that so far I could not nor wanted to curb. I cannot get my fill of books. And yes I do own a number higher than necessary... The books give us a delight that goes deep, they talk with us, advise us and bind us with a kind of familiarity active and penetrating; and the single book not only insinuates itself in our minds, but it makes us penetrate even the names of others, and so one does come the desire of the other."

"I certainly will not reject the praise you bestow upon me for having stimulated in many instances, not only in Italy but perhaps beyond its confines also, the pursuit of studies such as ours, which have suffered neglect for so many centuries; I am, indeed, almost the oldest of those among us who are engaged in the cultivation of these subjects. But I cannot accept the conclusion you draw from this, namely, that I should give place to younger minds, and, interrupting the plan of work on which I am engaged, give others an opportunity to write something, if they will, and not seem longer to desire to reserve everything for my own pen. How radically do our opinions differ, although, at bottom, our object is the same! I seem to you to have written everything, or at least a great deal, while to myself I appear to have produced almost nothing."

"I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying."

"I have friends whose society is delightful to me; they are persons of all countries and of all ages; distinguished in war, in council, and in letters; easy to live with, always at my command."

"I know and love the good, yet ah! the worst pursue."

"I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct. I had well-nigh forgotten where I was and our object in coming; but at last I dismissed my anxieties, which were better suited to other surroundings, and resolved to look about me and see what we had come to see. The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of the mountain were already warning us that the time was near at hand when we must go. As if suddenly wakened from sleep, I turned about and gazed toward the west. I was unable to discern the summits of the Pyrenees, which form the barrier between France and Spain; not because of any intervening obstacle that I know of but owing simply to the insufficiency of our mortal vision."

"I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me."

"I would have preferred to have been born in any other time than our own."

"In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did."

"It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myself against Love's blows: so I went on confident, unsuspecting; from that, my troubles started, amongst the public sorrows."

"It's great to be among the weeds flower!"

"Loving friendship is able to endure everything; it refuses no burden."

"My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside above the grave."

"My soul has rest, sweet sigh! alone in thee."

"Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure."

"Oh! could I throw aside these earthly bands that tie me down where wretched mortals sigh-- to join blest spirits in celestial lands!"

"Peace cannot find and do not have to go to war."

"Shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream."

"She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place. It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying; for death looked lovely in her face."

"So sweet all people sounds the word freedom that even audacity and impudence everywhere catch on because they have some similarities with freedom."

"Sweet is the death that taketh end by love."

"The aged love what is practical while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling."

"The senses reign, and reason now is dead; from one pleasing desire comes another. Virtue, honor, beauty, gracious bearing, sweet words have caught me in her lovely branches in which my heart is tenderly entangled. In thirteen twenty-seven, and precisely at the first hour of the sixth of April I entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out."

"The time will come when every change shall cease, this quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: no summer then shall glow, nor winter freeze; nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, but an eternal now shall ever last. Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, pain?d by the past, expecting ills to come, in some dread moment, by the fates assign?d, shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; and Time?s revolving wheels shall lose at last the speed that spins the future and the past: and, sovereign of an undisputed throne, awful eternity shall reign alone."

"The world?s delight is a brief dream."

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us or wound, us while they charm, but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away- sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come. I believe I speak but the strict truth when I claim that as there is none among earthly delights more noble than literature, so there is none so lasting, none gentler, or more faithful; there is none which accompanies its possessor through the vicissitudes of life at so small a cost of effort or anxiety."

"Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, in some dread moment. By the fates assign'd, shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind; and time's revolving wheels shall lose at last speed that spins the future and the past: and, sovereign of an undisputed throne, eternity shall reign alone."

"Thyself no more deceive, thy youth hath fled."

"To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day."

"Walk forwards in the radiance of the past."

"What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances."

"Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?"

"Who naught suspects is easily deceived."

"With sorrow remembering happy times."

"Yet have I oft been beaten in the field, And sometimes hurt, said I, but scorn'd to yield. He smiled and said: Alas! thou dost not see, My son, how great a flame's prepared for thee."

"Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows, mourning her ravish'd young or much-loved mate, a soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws and skies, with notes well tuned to her and state."

"You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me."

"You, my friend, by a strange confusion of arguments, try to dissuade me from continuing my chosen work by urging, on the one hand, the hopelessness of bringing my task to completion, and by dwelling, on the other, upon the glory which I have already acquired. Then, after asserting that I have filled the world with my writings, you ask me if I expect to equal the number of volumes written by Origen or Augustine. No one, it seems to me, can hope to equal Augustine. Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile in great minds? As for Origen, you know that I am wont to value quality rather than quantity, and I should prefer to have produced a very few irreproachable works rather than numberless volumes such as those of Origen, which are filled with grave and intolerable errors."