Great Throughts Treasury

"Music religious heat inspires, it wakes the soul and lifts it high, and wings it with sublime desires, and fits it to bespeak the Deity."

"Music when thus applied raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture."

"Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the great weakness of human nature."

"Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsel."

"Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue."

"Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may; indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings."

"Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it."

"Prejudice and self-sufficiency, naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind."

"Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance."

"Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praise-worthy in human life."

"Nothing make men sharper than want."

"Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them."

"Of all hardness of heart there is none so inexcusable as that of parents toward their children. An obstinate, inflexible, unforgiving temper is odious upon all occasions; but here it is unnatural."

"One of the most important, but one of the most difficult things to a powerful mind is to be its own master; a pond may lay quiet in a plain, but a lake wants mountains to compass and hold it in."

"Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate sin."

"Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart."

"The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding."

"Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them."

"The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pangs, even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half its bitterness when uttered in accepts that breathe love to the last sigh."

"The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them."

"The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness."

"The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it."

"The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented."

"The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment."

"The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living, in a little, much beneath them."

"The pleasantest part of a man’s life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit."

"The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married."

"The wise man endeavors to shine in himself; the fool to outshine others. The first is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities, the last is lifted up by the discovery of these which he observes in other men. The wise man considers what he wants, and the fool what he abounds in. The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation, and the fool when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him."

"The true happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self; and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive satisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theaters and assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon."

"This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul back on herself, and startles at destruction. ‘Tis the divinity that stirs within us; ‘tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man."

"There is nothing which strengthens faith more than the observance of morality."

"To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented is the only pleasing solitude."

"True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable."

"Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. Vice is infamous, though in a prince; and virtue honorable, though in a peasant."

"True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind; admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest."

"Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it."

"To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge, carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man."

"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind."

"We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them."

"With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it."

"Without constancy, there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world."

"Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It give bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity."

"A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer."

"Colors speak all languages."

"Admiration is a very short-lived passion that decays on growing familiar with its object unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by perpetual miracles rising up into its view."

"Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom."

"Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects the alchemist ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man's mind, body or fortune, it makes him easy under them."

"For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone."

"From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor."

"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief."