Great Throughts Treasury

"If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps."

"If we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to assert liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. We are sure, though we know not how, that necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times."

"If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for you good."

"If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own."

"In every work of genius we recognize our rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

"In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire."

"Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man."

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half-possession. That which each can do best none but his Maker can teach him."

"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free."

"In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as guide; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say Beauty is the pilot of the young soul."

"In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense."

"It is a problem that genius can very well solve - to illuminate every low or trite word you can offer it. Give you rubbish to Shakespeare, he will give it all back to you in gold and stars."

"It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness; and I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous."

"It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation, all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture."

"It is the eye that makes the horizon."

"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

"It is awful to look into the mind of man and see how free we are, to what frightful excesses our vices may run under the whited wall of a respectable reputation. Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!"

"It is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose."

"Language is fossil poetry."

"It takes a great deal of elevation of thought to produce a very little elevation of life."

"Knowledge exists to be imparted."

"Knowledge is the only elegance."

"Knowledge is the antidote to fear."

"Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelligent but Intelligence."

"Let a man behave in his own house as a guest."

"Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study. For no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul."

"Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon."

"Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him."

"Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds."

"Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high human office, a sacrament when its aim is grand, when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom or for love or devotion."

"Life is a boundless privilege."

"Life consists in what man is thinking of all day."

"Liberty is a slow fruit."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

"Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being."

"Life is hardly respectable if it has no generous task, no duties or affections that constitute a necessity of existence. Every man's task is his life-preserver."

"Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy."

"Life itself is a bubble and skepticism, and a sleep within a sleep."

"Love is strongest in pursuit; friendship in possession."

"Man is a piece of the universe made alive."

"Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man."

"Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste."

"Man was born to be rich, or grows rich by the use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor."

"Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid."

"Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor."

"Manners are the happy ways of doing things. If they are superficial, so are the dewdrops which give such a depth to the morning meadows."

"Men are better than their theology. Their daily life gives it the lie."

"Men love to wonder."

"Men lose their tempers in defending their tastes."

"Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science."