Great Throughts Treasury

"The world is but a large prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution."

"The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree; the Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag; the Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee."

"There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters than thy inferiors, shunning always such as are poor and needy; for if thou givest twenty gifts, and refuse to do the like but once, all that thou hast done will be lost, and such men will become thy mortal enemies."

"There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling."

"There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being."

"There was no other cause proceeding than his own will, no other matter than his own power, no other workman than his own word, and no other consideration than his own infinite goodness."

"There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation; the earth, heavens, and whole world is thereunto subject."

"These be those discourses of God whose effects those that live witness in themselves; the sensible in their sensible natures, the reasonable in their reasoning souls."

"This prescience of God, as it is prescience, is not the cause of anything futurely succeeding; neither doth God?s aforeknowledge impose any necessity, or bind."

"Those that attribute to the faculty any first or sole power have therein no other understanding than such a one hath who looking into the stern of a ship, and finding it guided by the helm and rudder, doth ascribe some absolute virtue to the piece of wood, without all consideration of the hand that guides it."

"This tide of man?s life after it once turneth and declineth ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again."

"They that are rich in words, in words discover"

"Time itself, under the dreadful shade of whose wings all things wither, hath wasted that lively virtue of nature in man, and beasts, and plants."

"Thou mayest be sure that he that will in private tell thee of thy faults, is thy friend, for he adventures thy dislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; there are few men that can endure it; every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies that bewitcheth mankind."

"Tis a sharp medicine, but it will cure all that ails you. -- last words before his beheadding"

"To live thy better, let thy worst thoughts die."

"To neglect God all our lives, and know that we neglect him; to offend God voluntarily, and know that we offend him, casting our hopes on the peace which we trust to make at parting, is no other than a rebellious presumption, and even a contemptuous laughing to scorn and deriding of God, his laws and precepts."

"Use your youth so that you may have comfort to remember it when it has forsaken you, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof."

"We may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's forepast miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings."

"War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune."

"What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!"

"We all foreknow that the sun will rise and set; that all men born into the world shall die again; that after winter the spring shall come; after the spring, summer and harvest; yet is not our foreknowledge the cause of any of those."

"What means did the devil find out, or what instruments did his own subtilty present him, as fittest and aptest to work his mischief by? Even the unquiet vanity of the woman; so as by Adam?s hearkening to the voice of his wife, contrary to the express commandment of the living God, mankind by that her incantation became the subject of labour, sorrow, and death: the woman being given to man for a comforter and companion, but not for a counsellor. It is also to be noted by whom the woman was tempted: even by the most ugly and unworthy of all beasts, into whom the devil entered and persuaded. Secondly, What was the motive of her disobedience? Even a desire to know what was most unfitting her knowledge; an affection which has ever since remained in all the posterity of her sex. Thirdly, What was it that moved the man to yield to her persuasions? Even the same cause which hath moved all men since to the like consent: namely, an unwillingness to grieve her, or make her sad, lest she should pine, and be overcome with sorrow. But if Adam, in the state of perfection, and Solomon the son of David, God?s chosen servant, and himself a man endued with the greatest wisdom, did both of them disobey their Creator by the persuasion and for the love they bare to a woman, it is not so wonderful as lamentable that other men in succeeding ages have been allured to so many inconvenient and wicked practices by the persuasions of their wives, or other beloved darlings, who cover over and shadow many malicious purposes with a counterfeit passion of dissimulate sorrow and unquietness."

"When the grand twelve million jury of our sins and sinful fury, 'Gainst our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then we live. Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader, unblotted lawyer, true proceeder."

"Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be."

"Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem."

"Whoso desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem."

"Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade, whoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself."

"Whoso taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be."

"Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and, consequently, the world itself."

"Whosoever will live altogether out of himself, and study other men?s humours, shall never be unfortunate."

"Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth."

"Ye pretty daughters of the earth and sun."

"With more patience men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty than the damages which they sustain by injustice."

"Yet stab at thee who will, no stab the soul can kill!"