Great Throughts Treasury

"So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain."

"Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life?s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way?Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ?there is joy is self-forgetfulness.? So I try to make the light in others? eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others? lips my happiness."

"So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good."

"Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle? At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.? The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair? It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear."

"So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied."

"Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light, music and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fail back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, there is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."

"The best way out is always through."

"The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed."

"The best-educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed."

"Sure the world is full of trouble, but as long as we have people undoing trouble we have a pretty good world."

"The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.""

"The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. Surely we must free men and women together before we can free women. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands -- the ownership and control of their lives and livelihood -- are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind are ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. How can women hope to help themselves while we and our brothers are helpless against the powerful organizations which modern parties represent and which contrive to rule the people? They rule the people because they own the means of physical life, land, and tools, and the nourishers of intellectual life, the press, the church, and the school. You say that the conduct of the woman suffragists is being disgracefully misrepresented by the British press. Here in America the leading newspapers misrepresent in every possible way the struggles of toiling men and women who seek relief. News that reflects ill upon the employers is skillfully concealed -- news of dreadful conditions under which laborers are forced to produce, news of thousands of men maimed in mills and mines and left without compensation, news of famines and strikes, news of thousands of women driven to a life of shame, news of little children compelled to labor before their hands are ready to drop their toys. Only here and there in a small and as yet uninfluential paper is the truth told about the workman and the fearful burdens under which he staggers."

"The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease."

"The fearful are caught as often as the bold."

"The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision."

"The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure."

"The friendship which is to be practiced or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other. Samuel Johnson The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them."

"The million little things that drop into your hands - the small opportunities each day brings He leaves us free to use or abuse and goes unchanging along His silent way."

"The mind is as big as the universe."

"The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel."

"The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination."

"The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next"

"The highest result of education is tolerance."

"The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision."

"The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old."

"The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses."

"The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of"

"The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome."

"The world is full of suffering but it is also full of people overcoming it."

"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision."

"The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all."

"The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."

"The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people."

"The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going"

"The world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks"

"There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be mad whole."

"There are times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost. ... When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until I wish ? oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish! ? that I might smash the idols I came to worship."

"Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, ?Knowledge is love and light and vision."

"To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable"

"To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug."

"There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention."

"There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."

"There is a lot of information out there already and we will try as best we can to ensure that the opposition are prepared and the civil service are prepared for whatever decision is made by the British electorate at the next election."

"There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness."

"There is no royal road to the summit, each person must zigzag their own way."

"They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears). They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole."

"There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark."

"To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly."

"True friends never apart maybe in distance but never in heart."