Great Throughts Treasury

"Usury dulls and damps all industries, improvements, and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring if it were not for this slug."

"Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion."

"We think according to nature; we speak according to rules; but we act according to custom."

"We cannot command Nature except by obeying her."

"Wealth is a good servant, a very bad mistress."

"When the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further. But when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must fly to Providence and Deity."

"Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them curlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes."

"Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses."

"When the soul resolves to perform every duty, immediately it is conscious of the presence of God."

"Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past."

"Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn into bees, and kill themselves in stinging others."

"Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing; it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall; it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him; it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour."

"Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business."

"If a man be gracious and courteous to stranger, sit shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them."

"A civilization which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a very limited period of progress."

"A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable and should be secured because they seldom return."

"If a person will begin with certainties, they shall end in doubts; but if they be content to begin with doubts, they shall end in certainties."

"It is not what men eat, but what they digest that makes them strong; Not what we gain, but what we save that makes us rich; Not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned; Not what we preach or pray, but what we practice and believe that makes us Christians."

"It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity."

"Men may be known six different ways, viz. – 1. by their countenances; 2. their words; 3. their actions; 4. their tempers; 5. their ends; and 6. by the relation of others."

"Nature is only to be commanded by obeying her."

"Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. Force maketh nature more violent in the return."

"No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."

"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused man to fall."

"Nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much."

"Nobility of birth commonly abateth industry."

"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible."

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

"The justest division of human learning is that derived from the three different faculties of the soul, the seat of learning; history being relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason."

"There is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death."

"The wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

"There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the brief, which is the enjoyment of it."

"The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation."

"The art of government includes the political offices; viz., 1. preservation; 2. the happiness; and 3. the enlargement of the state."

"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green."

"But no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us."

"There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying."

"We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is."

"It is a strange desire to seek power and lose liberty."

"All knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself."

"Be true to thyself, as thou be not false to others."

"As for the passions and studies of the mind: avoid envy; anxious fears; anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes; mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature."

"But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation."

"All good moral philosophy is but the handmaid to religion."

"Art is man added to Nature."

"Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be. It is like that, which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion; which is sure to fill the body full of crudities, and secret seeds of diseases. Therefore measure not dispatch, by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business."