Great Throughts Treasury

"The Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. It invites to the noblest solitude and to the noblest society."

"The test of the poet is the power to take the passing day, with its news, its cares, its fears, as he shares them, and hold it up to a divine reason, till he sees it to have a purpose and beauty. Then the dry twig blossoms in his hand."

"The things taught in colleges and schools are not education, but the means of education."

"The things taught in schools are not an education but the means of an education."

"The three practical rules... 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any but what you like."

"The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power."

"The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded."

"The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer are - (1) Never read any book that is not a year old. (2) Never read any but the famed books (3) Never read any but what you like."

"The true test of civilization is, not the census, not the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out."

"The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of a disease which does not at once suggest a cure."

"The truth, the hope, of any time must be sought in the minorities. Michael Angelo was the conscience of Italy. We grow free with his name, and find it ornamental now, but in his own day his friends were few."

"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without."

"The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."

"The world belongs to the energetic."

"The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck."

"There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination."

"There are few fixtures in nature, The universe is fluid and volatile."

"There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveler, who says, "Anywhere but here.""

"The world is mathematical, and has no casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success has no more eccentricity than the gingham and muslin we weave in our mills."

"There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love."

"There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the State, or letters; and the reason why is this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man; that is all anybody can tell you about it."

"There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers, and the best heads among them take the best places."

"There is no knowledge that is not power."

"There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man."

"There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; there is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite love the benefit."

"There is no end to the sufficiency of character. It can afford to wait; it can do without what is called success"

"There is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning."

"There is properly no history, only biography."

"Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes."

"They only who build on Ideas, build for eternity."

"Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present."

"This time, like all times, is a good one if we just know what to do with it."

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we will not find it."

"Though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was a first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry."

"Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it."

"Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done."

"Thought is the property of those only who can entertain it."

"Thoughts rule the world."

"Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which are left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened."

"Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom."

"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius."

"Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour."

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

"To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom."

"To hazard a contradiction - freedom is necessary."

"To be great is to be misunderstood."

"To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine."

"To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illuminated mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light."

"Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time. This cup which nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call hope, love, ambition, science; especially it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself."