Great Throughts Treasury

"A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. And now among other things they are urging you to "cultivate" war gardens, while at the same time a government war report just issued shows that practically 52 percent of the arable, tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords, speculators and profiteers. They themselves do not cultivate the soil. Nor do they allow others to cultivate it. They keep it idle to enrich themselves, to pocket the millions of dollars of unearned increment." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ...Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"One does nothing who tries to console a despondent person with word. A friend is one who aids with deeds at a critical time when deeds are called for." - Euripedes NULL

"I hope the seeds I have sown will be taken up by those who will follow me because the journey I have begun cannot be undertaken in isolation." - Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

"And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"A great spirit has been amongst us, and a great artist is gone." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"My worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism, all along that spoiled everything." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap. People who sense that modernity is ending proclaim a postmodern age." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"An ideal is a port toward which we resolve to steer. We may not reach it. The mere fact that our goal is definitely located does not suffice to conduct us thither. But surely we shall thus stand a better chance of making port in the end than if we drift about aimlessly, the sport of winds and tides, without having decided in our own minds in what direction we ought to bend our course. The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being." - Felix Adler

"What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth." - Felix Adler

"Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"The devil is bad because he is old." - Italian Proverbs

"The gardener's dog does not eat lettuce and will not let others eat it." - Italian Proverbs

"Yes and no rule the world." - Italian Proverbs

"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Italian Proverbs

"The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But... I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons- 'twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we're made. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"FRODO: I wish none of this had happened. GANDALF: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien