Great Throughts Treasury

"When a man is true, if he were in hell he could not be miserable. He is right with himself because right with Him whence he came. To be right with God is to be right with the universe: one with the power, the love, the will of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but selfishness."

"Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss."

"When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone."

"When I look into the blue sky, it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness that I could lie for centuries, and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness."

"When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed -- the loss of some little article, say -- spurring my memory, and hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss; when a book has been borrowed of me and is not returned, and I have forgotten the borrower; and fret over the missing volume, ... is it not time that I lost a few things, when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is the mercy of God: it comes to teach us to let them go. Or have I forgotten a thought that came to me, which seemed of the truth? I keep trying and trying to call it back, feeling a poor man until that thought be recovered -- to be far more lost, perhaps, in a notebook into which I shall never look again to find it! I forget that it is live things that God cares about."

"When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when another gives it him, that other is able to fulfill it."

"When I can no more stir my soul to move, and life is but the ashes of a fire; when I can but remember that my heart once used to live and love, long and aspire- O, be thou then the first, the one thou art; be thou the calling, before all answering love, and in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire."

"When the agony of death was over, when the storm of the world died away behind His retiring spirit, and He entered the regions where there is only life, and therefore all that is not music is silence."

"When the sons of God show as they are, taking, with the character, the appearance and the place, that belong to their sonship; when the sons of God sit with the Son of God on the throne of their Father; then shall they be in potency of fact the lords of the lower creation, the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it: then shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help. Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! the heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen; nor can hope go too far in hoping what God will do for the creation that now groaneth and travaileth in pain because our higher birth is delayed."

"When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over."

"Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here... Where did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the skies as I came through."

"Where was God?"

"Whence then came thy dream? answers Hope."

"Wherein then lies the service of Death? … In this: it is not the fetters that gall, but the fetters that soothe, which eat into the soul. In this way is the loss of things … a motioning, hardly toward, yet in favor of, deliverance. It may seem to a man the first of his slavery when it is in truth the beginning of his freedom. Never soul was set free without being made to feel its slavery."

"Where every day is not the Lord's, the Sunday is his least of all. There may be a sickening unreality even where there is no conscious hypocrisy."

"Where people know their work and do it, life has few blank spaces for boredom and they are seldom to be pitied. Where people have not yet found their work, they may be more pitied than those that beg their bread. When a man knows his work and will not do it, pity him more than one who is to be hanged tomorrow."

"Where did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the sky as I came through."

"Wherever there is anything to love, there is beauty in some form."

"While a satisfied justice is an unavoidable eternal event, a satisfied revenge is an eternal impossibility."

"Who can give a man this, his own name?"

"Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise."

"Why don't you go on, Mother dear?' he asked. 'It's such nonsense!' said his mother. 'I believe it would go on forever.' 'That's just what it did,' said Diamond.' 'What did?' she asked.' 'Why, the river. That's almost the very tune it used to sing."

"Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- Not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning."

"Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality?—not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier?"

"With every morn my life afresh must break the crust of self, gathered about me fresh; that thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake the darkness out of me, and rend the mesh the spider-devils spin out of the flesh- eager to net the soul before it wake, that it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake."

"With every haunting trouble then, great or small, the loss of thousands or the lack of a shilling, go to God… If your trouble is such that you cannot appeal to Him, the more need you should appeal to him!"

"Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness."

"Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel."

"Within the man and the woman a divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and lovable- slowly fading, it may be-dying away under the fierce heat of vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of sepulchral selfishness, but there? … It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible for us to hate. If it were an animal only, and not a"

"With wandering eyes and aimless zeal, she hither, thither, goes; her speech, her motions, all reveal a mind without repose. She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea, by madness tortured, driven; one hour's forgetfulness would be a gift from very heaven! She slumbers into new distress; the night is worse than day: exulting in her helplessness; Hell's dogs yet louder bay. The demons blast her to and fro; she has not quiet place, enough a woman still, to know a haunting dim disgrace. A human touch! a pang of death! And in a low delight thou liest, waiting for new breath, for morning out of night. Thou risest up: the earth is fair, the wind is cool; thou art free! Is it a dream of hell's despair dissolves in ecstasy? That man did touch thee! Eyes divine make sunrise in thy soul; thou seest love in order shine:- his health hath made thee whole! Thou, sharing in the awful doom, didst help thy Lord to die; then, weeping o'er his empty tomb, didst hear him Mary cry. He stands in haste; he cannot stop; home to his God he fares: 'Go tell my brothers I go up to my Father, mine and theirs.' Run, Mary! lift thy heavenly voice; cry, cry, and heed not how; make all the new-risen world rejoice- its first apostle thou! What if old tales of thee have lied, or truth have told, thou art all-safe with Him, whate'er betide dwell'st with Him in God's heart!"

"Yes,' he answered; 'and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die."

"Yet I know that good is coming to me—that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, FAREWELL."

"You have tasted of death now, said the old man. Is it good? It is good, said Mossy. It is better than life. No, said the old man: it is only more life."

"You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the one dreadful thing. That His Father should forget him! -- no power in Himself could make up for that. He feared nothing for Himself; and never once employed His divine power to save Himself from His human fate. Let God do that for Him if He saw fit. He did not come into the world to take care of Himself... His life was of no value to Him but as His Father cared for it. God would mind all that was necessary for Him, and He would mind the work His Father had given Him to do. And, my friends, this is just the one secret of a blessed life, the one thing every man comes into this world to learn."

"You doubt because you love truth."

"You allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings"

"You must learn to be strong in the dark as well as in the day, else you will always be only half brave."

"You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself."

"You've got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word."

"You would not think any duty small, if you yourself were great."