Great Throughts Treasury

"From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education." - Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams

"Real joy seems dissonant from the human character in its present condition; and if it be felt, it must come from a higher region, for the world is shadowed by sorrow; thorns array the ground; the very clouds, while they weep fertility on our mountains, seem also to shed a tear on man’s grave who departs, unlike the beauties of summer, to return no more; who fades unlike the sons of the forest, which another summer beholds new clothed, when he is unclothed and forgotten." - Dwight Douglas Andrews

"Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease, the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will soon follow." - Richard Baxter

"Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it brings you to the grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there. You love not death; love not the cause of death." - Richard Baxter

"Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported, insulated, and isolated from the risks of life - and if we fall, our government stands ready with Band-Aids of every size." - Shirley Temple, later Shirley Temple Black, born Shirley Jane Temple

"Whoever undertakes a long Journey, if he be wise, makes it his Business to find out an agreeable Companion. How cautious then should He be, who is to take a Journey for Life, whose Fellow-Traveler must not part with him but at the Grave; his Companion at Bed and Board and Sharer of all the Pleasures and Fatigues of his Journey; as the Wife must be to the Husband! She is no such Sort of Ware, that a Man can be rid of when he pleases: When once that’s purchas’d, no Exchange, no Sale, no Alienation can be made: She is an inseparable Accident to Man: Marriage is a Noose, which, fasten’d about the Neck, runs the closer, and fits more uneasy by our struggling to get loose: ‘Tis a Gordian Knot which none can unty, and being twisted with our Thread of Life, nothing but the Schyth of Death can cut it." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"We cannot enjoy a friend here. If we are to meet it is beyond the grave. How much of our soul a friend takes with him! We half die in him." - William Ellery Channing

"There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, and as the mind is pitch’d, the ear is pleas’d with melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave; some chord in unison with what we hear is touch’d within us, and the heart replies." - William Cowper

"Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave." - Augustine Joseph Hickey Duganne

"The secret thoughts of a man run over all things holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame, or blame; which verbal discourse cannot do, farther than the judgment shall approve of the time, place and persons." - Thomas Hobbes

"God may be worshipped and contemplated in any of his aspects. But to persist in worshipping only one aspect to the exclusion of all the rest is to run into grave spiritual peril... The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness... The complete transformation of consciousness, which is “enlightenment,” “deliverance,” “salvation,” comes only when God is thought of as the perennial Philosophy affirms Him to be - immanent as well as transcendent, supra-personal as well as personal - and when religious practices are adapted to this conception." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"In civilized life... it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Man of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion." - William James

"In the hour of death the only adequate consolation is that one has not evaded life, but has endured it. What a man shall accomplish or not accomplish, does not lie in his power to decide; he is not the One who will guide the world; he has only to obey... The point consists precisely in loving his neighbor, or, what is essentially the same thing, in living equally for every man. Every other point of view is a contentious one, however advantageous and comfortable and apparently significant this position may be... yet in the hour of death, he will confidently dare say to his soul: “I have done my best; whether I have accomplished anything, I do not know; whether I have helped anyone, I do not know; but that I have lived for them, that I do know, and I know it from the fact that they insulted me. And this is my consolation, that I shall not have to take the secret with me to the grave, that I, in order to have good and undisturbed and comfortable days in life, have denied my kinship to other men, kinship with the poor, in order to live in aristocratic seclusion, or with the distinguished, in order to live in secret obscurity." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

"Real security... is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaption to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave." -

"We die every day; every moment deprives us of a portion of life and advances us a step toward the grave; our whole life is only a long and painful sickness." - Jean Baptiste Massillon

"Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?" - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?" - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"All that lies between the cradle and the grave is uncertain." -

"Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man." -

"Grief should be like joy, majestic, sedate, confirming, cleansing, equable, making free, strong to consume small troubles, to command great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." - Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL

"The lips of a deceased scholar tingle pleasantly in the grave when a traditional statement is quoted in his name." - Simeon ben Yohai, aka Simon ben Yohai or Rashbi or Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai

"Life is precious to the old person. He is not interested merely in thoughts of yesterday’s good life and tomorrow’s path to the grave. He does not want his later years to be a sentence of solitary confinement in society. Nor does he want them to be a death watch." - David Allman

"The whole secret of remaining young in spite of years, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in oneself, by poetry, by contemplation, by charity, - that is, in fewer words, the maintenance of harmony in the soul. When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in its right place within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work of God. Deep and grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and the eternal order, reason touched with emotion and a serene tenderness of heart - these surely are the foundations of wisdom." -

"He that studies to know duty, and labors in all things to do it, will have two heavens - one of joy, peace and comfort on earth, and the other of glory and happiness beyond the grave." - John Bowring, fully Sir John Bowring

"With his knife and fork he digs his own grave." -

"Evening is the delight of virtuous age; it seems an emblem of the tranquil close of busy life - serene, placid, and mild, with the impress of its great Creator stamped upon it; it spreads its quiet wings over the grave, and seems to promise that all shall be peace beyond it." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"Experience has taught me that the only friends we can call our own, who can have no change, are those over whom the grave has closed; the seal of death is the only seal of friendship." -

"Sensuality is the grave of the soul." - William Ellery Channing

"We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven." - Tyron Edwards

"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." - Albert Einstein

"I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"The grave is a sacred workshop of nature! a chamber for the figure of the body; death and life dwell here together as man and wife. They are one body, they are in union; God has joined them together, and what God hath joined together let no man put asunder." - Theodore Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger

"When I go down to the grave I can say I have finished my day's work. But I cannot say I have finished my life. My day's work will begin again the next morning." - Victor Hugo

"The only jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is wisdom." - James Alfred Langford

"Best trust the happy moments. What they gave makes man less fearful of that certain grave and gives his work compassion and new eyes, the days that make us happy make us wise." - John Masefield

"The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Love is the only possession which we can carry with us beyond the grave." -

"Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." - Thomas Paine

"The world recedes; it disappears; heav’n opens on my eyes; my ears with sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy victory? O Death! where is thy sting?" - Alexander Pope

"The grave levels all distinctions and makes the whole world kin." - Union Prayer Book NULL

"Always in everything let there be reverence; with the deportment grave as when one is thinking (deeply), and with speech composed and definite. This will make the people tranquil. Pride should not be allowed to grow; the desires should not be indulged; the will should not be gratified to the full; pleasure should not be carried to excess." - Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL

"[In memory of Dad] Do not stand by my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep – I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. Do not stand by my grave an cry. I am not there. I did not die." - G. W. F. NULL

"The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is not cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The predicament of contemporary man is grave. We seem to be destined either for a new mutation or for destruction." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Papacy is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." - Thomas Hobbes

"The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel that I haven’t given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, “My day’s work is done.” But I cannot say, “My life is done.” My day’s work will recommence the next morning. the tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn." - Victor Hugo

"There is a magic power in your own hands. Take your vital decisions – they may be grave and momentous and far-reaching in their consequences. Think a hundred times before you take any decision, but once a decision is taken, stand by it as one man." - Fatima Jinna, also known as Madr-e-Millat, mother of the nation

"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"The grave is the first stage of the journey into eternity." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"Obstinacy and heat of opinion is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so certain, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, grave, and serious as an ass." -