Great Throughts Treasury

"To believe in Christianity, without knowing why we believe it, is not Christian faith, but blind credulity."

"Too religious, in the proper sense of the word, we cannot be. We cannot have the religious sentiments and principles too strong, or too deeply fixed, if only they have a right object. We cannot love God too warmly?or honour him too highly?or strive to serve Him too earnestly?or trust Him too implicitly; because our duty is to love Him ?with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind, and all our strength.?"

"We cannot be too much on our guard against reactions, lest we rush from one fault into another contrary fault."

"We find?in the case of political affairs?that the most servile submission to privileged classes, and the grossest abuses of power by these, have been the precursors of the wildest ebullitions of popular fury,?of the overthrow indiscriminately of ancient institutions, good and bad,?and of the most turbulent democracy; generally proportioned in its extravagance and violence to the degree of previous oppression and previous degradation. And again we find that whenever men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionably great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism; like shipwrecked mariners clinging to a bare and rugged rock as a refuge from the waves."

"We should not confound together physical delicacy of nerves, and extreme tenderness of heart and benevolence and gentleness of character. It is also important to guard against mistaking for good nature what is properly good humour,?a cheerful flow of spirits, and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness."

"When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamour and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the Public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is ?to shine on.?"

"What used to mislead men, and still misleads not a few, as to the costliness of war, and the check it gives to national prosperity, is, that they see the expenditure go to our own fellow-subjects. We pay a great deal, it is true, out of the public purse, to soldiers; but then it is our soldiers, the Queen?s subjects, that get it. Powder, and guns, and ships of war, cost a great deal; but this cost is again to the manufacturers of powder and guns, &c. And thus people brought themselves to fancy that the country altogether did not sustain any loss at all?. The fallacy consists in not perceiving that though the labour of the gunpowder-makers, soldiers, &c., is not unproductive to them, inasmuch as they are paid for it, it is unproductive to us, as it leaves no valuable results. If gunpowder is employed in blasting rocks, so as to open a rich vein of ore or coal, or to make a useful road, the manufacturer gets his payment for it just the same as if it had been made into fire-works; but then, the mine, or the road, will remain as an article of wealth to him who has so employed it. After having paid for the powder he will still be richer than he was before; whereas if he had employed it for fireworks he would have been so much the poorer, since it would have left no results."

"When Bacon speaks of time as an innovator, he might have remarked, by the way?what of course he well knew?that though this is an allowable and convenient form of expression, it is not literally correct. Bishop Copleston, in the remark already referred to in the notes on ?Delays,? terms the regarding time as an agent one of the commonest errors; for ?in reality time does nothing and is nothing. We use it,? he goes on to say, ?as a compendious expression for all those causes which act slowly and imperceptibly. But, unless some positive cause is in action, no change takes place in the lapse of one thousand years; as, for instance, in a drop of water enclosed in a cavity of silex. The most intelligent writers are not free from this illusion.?"

"When complaints are made?often not altogether without reason?of the prevailing ignorance of facts on such or such subjects, it will often be found that the parties censured, though possessing less knowledge than is desirable, yet possess more than they know what to do with. Their deficiency in arranging and applying their knowledge, in combining facts, and correctly deducing, and rightly employing, general principles, will be perhaps greater than their ignorance of facts."

"When first we practise to deceive.?"

"Whenever men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionality great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism."

"While the children of the higher classes always call their parents ?papa? and ?mamma,? the children of the peasantry usually call them ?father? and ?mother.?"

"With some minds of a baser nature, there is a difficulty, proverbially, in forgiving those whom one is conscious of having injured; and, again, those (especially if equals or inferiors) who have done very great and important services, beyond what can ever receive an adequate return. Rochefoucault even says that ?to most men it is less dangerous to do hurt than to do them too much good.? But then it was his system to look on the dark side only of mankind."