Great Throughts Treasury

"Better a friend at court than gold on the finger." - Welsh Proverbs

"To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity." - Wendell Berry

"I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"I... made brash, dashing interpretive photographs which were overly clever and with too much technique… with great depth of field, very little depth of feeling, and with considerable 'success'." - W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith

"The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to." - Walker Percy

"The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain - There it was, word for word, the poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed a place to go to in his own direction. How he had recomposed the pines, shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds for the outlook that would be right, where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: the exact rock where his inexactness would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, recognize his unique and solitary home." - Wallace Stevens

"In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"If sex? is the sermon made of art, love is the lady of that tower." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Laws enacted to help its citizens have also begun to scare them!" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"A new challenge awaits us at the beginning of the twenty-first century: to go beyond fragmentation, to go beyond the incompatible sets of values held even by serious-minded people, to mature beyond the self-righteousness of one’s accepted approaches and be open to total living and total revolution. In this era, to become a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a luxury that we can ill afford, and to be a social activist without a scientific understanding of the inner workings of the mind is the worst folly. Neither approach in isolation has had any significant success. There is no question now that an inquirer will have to make an effort to be socially conscious or that an activist will have to be persuaded of the moral crisis in the human psyche, the significance of being attentive to the inner life. The challenge awaiting us is to go much deeper as human beings, to abandon superficial prejudices and preferences, to expand understanding to a global scale, integrating the totality of living, and to become aware of the wholeness of which we are a manifestation." - Vimala Thakar

"A spontaneous cessation of mental activity releases an absolutely new and dynamic energy. Silence increases the sensitivity of the total being. It refreshes the nervous system in an astounding way. As you come out totally replenished when you have had profound and innocent sleep, So do you come out totally renewed when you have had ceased to function through the ego in the hour of silence." - Vimala Thakar

"One has to see that one does not waste the precious energy unwarrantedly. The energy that is built-in in childhood and youth is our capital. It should be conserved and used with care and concern." - Vimala Thakar

"Traditionally, there have been two separate approaches. One approach takes us toward the social, the economic, the political problems, and says, “Look here, unless the economic and political problems are solved, there will be no happiness and no peace, there will be no end to suffering. It is the responsibility of every individual to engage in solving these problems according to some ideology. Turning toward the inner life, the imbalances and impurities of the inner life, that is not so important, that can be taken care of later on, for it is a self-centered, egoistic activity. But the responsibility is toward the society, toward the human race, so keep aside all those problems of meditation and silence, inner sophistication, transformation for inner revolution—keep all that aside. First turn toward this.” And the other approach says, “The political and economic problems cannot be solved unless the individual is transformed totally. Be concerned with your psychological mutation, the inner, radical revolution. The political, the economic, the social problems can wait.”" - Vimala Thakar

"Drawing doctrine requires Matngaha to ignore public opinion." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendor of nature." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided — because I've been on the verge of marriage many times — I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do." - Virginia Satir

"It is now clear to me that the family is a microcosm of the world. To understand the world, we can study the family: issues such as power, intimacy, autonomy, trust, and communication skills are vital parts underlying how we live in the world. To change the world is to change the family." - Virginia Satir

"A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Life is what you see in people's eyes, life is what they learn and learning, never ceases to be aware that, although she tries to hide - what?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Now then is my chance to find out what is of great importance, and I must be careful, and tell no lies." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The critic of the opposite sex will be genuinely puzzled and surprised by an attempt to alter the current scale of values, and will see in it not merely a difference of view, but a view that is weak, or trivial, or sentimental, because it differs from their own." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It is the Path of the Good Mind which Thou hast manifested to me, O Ahura! Whereby the well-doers, in accordance with the teaching of the Spiritual Guides, acting in harmony with Truth alone, Shall pass onward to the assigned reward of which Thou art the bestower, O Mazda! This precious reward of Thine, O Mazda, Thou givest by way of the Good Mind, Thou givest to those who perform actions through knowledge and pure thought; who attempt for the progress and development of the world; fulfill God's desire and try for the progress of God's Will through truth and righteousness." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"It is possible for evil to be contained." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"He had been married and had had offspring. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them the way he might have lost his handkerchief." - Victor Hugo

"Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"But the most powerful arguments in favor of 'a tragic optimism' are those which in Latin are called argumenta ad hominem. Jerry Long, to cite an example, is a living testimony to 'the defiant power of the Spirit' . . . To quote the Texarkana Gazette, 'Jerry Long has been paralyzed from his neck down since a diving accident which rendered him a quadriplegic three years ago. He was 17 when the accident occurred. Today Long can use his mouth stick to type. He attends two courses at Community College via a special telephone. The intercom allows Long to both hear and participate in class discussions. He also occupies his time by reading, watching television and writing.' And in a letter I received from him, he writes: 'I view my life as being abundant with meaning and purpose. The attitude that I adopted on that fateful day has become my personal credo for life: I broke my neck, it didn't break me. I am currently enrolled in my first psychology course in college. I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others. I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible.'" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it's not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"It logically follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies — it must be rooted in self-transcendence: Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe." - Václav Havel

"No one wants either necessaries or luxuries. Moreover, the race is managed for the good of the commonwealth, and not of private individuals, and the magistrates must be obeyed." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"Give work rather than alms to the poor. The former drives out indolence, the latter industry." - Tryon Edwards

"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"There is an experience of the love of God which, when it comes upon us, and enfolds us, and bathes us, and warms us, is so utterly new that we can hardly identify it with the old phrase, God is love. Can this be the love of God, this burning, tender, wooing, wounding pain of love that pierces the marrow of my bones and burns out old loves and ambitions - God experienced is a vast surprise." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer-- a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"It is better to live for one day as a tiger than to live for a thousand years as a sheep." - Tibetan Proverbs

"How shocking must thy summons be, O death, to him that is at ease in his possessions! who, counting on long years of pleasure here, is quite unfurnished for the world to come." - Hugh Blair

"All animals copulate but only humans osculate. Parakeets rub beaks? Sure they do, but only little old ladies who murder schoolchildren with knitting needles to steal their lunch money so that they can buy fresh kidneys to feed overweight kitty cats would place bird billing in the realm of the true kiss." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Did it ever strike you that goodness is not merely a beautiful thing, but by far the most beautiful thing in the whole world? So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that riches, honor, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth having in comparison with being good; and the utterly best thing for a person is to be good, even though they were never to be rewarded for it." - Charles Kingsley

"Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself!" - William James