Great Throughts Treasury

"Tragedy seems to consist in temperament, not in events. There are natures so doomed that no prosperity can soothe their ragged and disheveled desolation."

"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great."

"Trust thyself. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being."

"Valor consists in the power of self-recovery."

"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string."

"Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind’s eye to read its oracles."

"Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men."

"We judge a man's wisdom by his hope."

"We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."

"Wake the mind and it will be vocation, ear, judge, apology, guard, physician, prophet, heaven unto itself."

"Vigor is contagious; and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action."

"We must be our own before we can be another's."

"We need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul."

"What I do is all that concerns me, not what they think."

"What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?"

"What is life but the angle of vision? What is life but what a [person] is thinking of all day? By how much we know, so much we are."

"What is the hardest task in the world? To think."

"When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first."

"When you are sincerely pleased you are nourished."

"What your heart thinks great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right."

"When it comes to divide an estate, the politest men quarrel."

"Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness... Every secret crime has its reporter."

"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"You can take better care of your secret than another."

"Wisdom attempts nothing enormous and disproportioned to its powers, nothing which it cannot perform or nearly perform."

"With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall."

"You will always find those who think they know what your duty is better than you know it."

"Wisdom has its root in goodness, and not goodness its root in wisdom."

"You cannot do wrong without suffering."

"‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart."

"A believer, a mind whose faith is consciousness, is never disturbed because other persons do not yet see the fact which he sees."

"A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us."

"A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values."

"A certain awkwardness makes the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow things in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today - "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood."-Is is to bad then to be misunderstood... to be great is to be misunderstood."

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud."

"A man cannot speak but he judges himself...no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it."

"A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that only in our easy, simple spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine."

"A man in the wrong may more easily be convinced than one half right."

"A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and one his best."

"A man's action is only a picture book of his creed."

"A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule."

"A man is a god in ruin."

"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection."

"A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking."

"A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness."

"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proposition to the depth of its source is the force of its projection."

"A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends."

"Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit, and not give the bread of life."

"All diseases run into one, old age."