Great Throughts Treasury

"The Language of the Dream, night is contrary to that of Waking Day. It is a language of Images and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations."

"The last speech, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity ? how awful!"

"The light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us."

"The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man."

"The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father."

"The mariners all ?gan work the ropes, where they were wont to do: they raised their limbs like lifeless tools - We were a ghastly crew."

"The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: and a thousand thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I."

"The moving moon went up the sky, and nowhere did abide: softly she was going up, and a star or two beside."

"The mother says to her daughter: Daughter bid thy daughter, to her daughter, that her daughter's daughter is crying."

"The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity."

"The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman."

"The only danger lies in the leaping from low to high, with the neglect of the intervening gradation."

"The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the license allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible."

"The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

"The owlet atheism, sailing on obscene wings across the noon, drops his blue-fringed lids, and shuts them close, and, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven, cries out, Where is it?"

"The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain."

"The Past lives o'er again, In its effects, and to the guilty spirit The ever-frowning Present is its image."

"The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart, and prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not prevents, universal benevolence."

"The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination."

"The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM."

"The present works of present man."

"The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect."

"The presence of the love it would conceal."

"The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in my judgment, a sin to do so."

"The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself."

"The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost."

"The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but itself"

"The river Rhine, it is well known, doth wash your city of Cologne; but tell me, nymphs! What power divine shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?"

"The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is their characteristic formula."

"The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead."

"The secret ministry of frost."

"The saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all."

"The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to interest."

"The shadow of the dome of pleasure floated midway on the waves; where was heard the mingled measure from the fountain and the caves."

"The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, merrily did we drop."

"The self-moment I could pray; and from my neck so free the Albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea."

"The study of the Bible will keep anyone from being vulgar in style."

"The spirit of divinest Liberty."

"The sublime discoveries of Newton, and, together with these, his not less fruitful than wonderful application, of the higher math is to the movement of the celestial bodies, and to the laws of light, gave almost religious sanction to the corpuscular system and mechanical theory. It became synonymous with philosophy itself. It was the sole portal at which truth was permitted to enter. The human body was treated an hydraulic machine... In short, from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life, organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae."

"The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; with far-heard whisper o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark."

"The sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea."

"The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors; two, facility to acquirers; and three, hope to all."

"The tendency having been given in kind, it is required to render the phenomena intelligible as its different degrees and modifications. Still more perfect will the explanation be, should the necessity of this progression and of these ascending gradations be contained in the assumed idea of life, as thus defined by the general form and common purport of all its various tendencies."

"The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous."

"The true key to the declension of the Roman Empire ? which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work ? may be stated in two words: ? the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation."

"The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert."

"The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea."

"The Understanding suggests the materials of reasoning: the Reason decides upon them. The first can only say,?This is, or ought to be so. The last says,?It must be so."

"The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed."

"The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them."