Great Throughts Treasury

"The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others or by each to himself." - John Stuart Mill

"Owing to the liability of the human mind to fall into mistakes, this very pursuit of knowledge may be a snare to [man] unless he has a divine Master, whom he may obey without misgiving, and who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve his own freedom." -

"Better that the nation grow poor for a cause we can honor, than grow rich for an end that is unknown. Who can regard without deep misgiving the process of accumulating wealth unaccompanied by a corresponding growth of knowledge as to the uses to which wealth must be applied? This is what we see in normal times, and the spectacle is profoundly disturbing. Far less disturbing at all events is that process of spending the wealth which we have now to witness." - L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

"Now the misgiving arose in her whether she had mistaken arrogance for duty; whether, cleaving so closely to honor she had forgotten the obligation of mercy. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there." - Samuel Butler