Great Throughts Treasury

"Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers." - Amos Bronson Alcott

"In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless." - Eric Hoffer

"The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us; they implore us to think more of the character of our people than of its vast numbers; to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as a means to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasures - and thus give to the world the example of a nation whose wisdom increases with prosperity, and whose virtues are equal to its power." - Horace Mann

"Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources." - Ronald S. Miller

"The point in a relationship is not to make us feel good, but to lead us into a profound alchemy of soul that reveals to us any of the pathways and opening that are the geography of our own destiny and potentiality." - Thomas Moore

"True conversation is an interpenetration of worlds, a genuine intercourse of souls, which doesn’t have to be self-consciously profound but does have to touch matters of concern to the soul... Conversation may also relive us from the pressures of everyday activity and decision-making, opening us up to undisclosed levels of our experience. Soul resides in the overtones and undertones, not in the flat body of literal events. Conversation performs a pleasurable and gentle alchemy on experience, sublimating it into forms that can be examined. Experience itself takes wing from conversation... Conversation is the sex act of the soul, and as such it is supremely conducive to the cultivation of intimacy." - Thomas Moore

"Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may learn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk in water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmitted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness. " - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"In alchemy it is stated that whenever we define the space from which we are responsible, everything is given within that space. It is as if the whole Universe comes down and sits at our feet... ready to be used for God's plan on Earth." - Reshad Feild, born Richard Timothy Feild

"Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!" - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes and feelings." - William Matthews

"The appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"This book is fiction, but there is always a chance that such a work of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway