Great Throughts Treasury

"Pay attention to all the leaves, the flowers, the birds and the dewdrops. If you can stop and look deeply, you will be able to recognize your beloved one manifesting again and again in different forms. You will again embrace the joy of life." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible rights. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint. Foolish soul! What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all." - Thomas Carlyle

"Genius . . . means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble." - Thomas Carlyle

"I find successful exertion is a powerful means of exhilaration, which discharges itself in good humor upon others." - Thomas Chalmers

"I have four good reasons for being an abstainer—my head is clearer, my health is better, my heart is lighter, and my purse is heavier." - Thomas Guthrie

"A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many." - Thomas Jefferson

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." - Thomas Jefferson

"I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson

"I know it will give great offence to the New England clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them." - Thomas Jefferson

"I think the truth must now be obvious that our people are too happy at home to enter into regular service, and that we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, as the Greeks and Romans who had no standing armies; and that in doing this all must be marshaled, classed by their ages, and every service ascribed to its competent class." - Thomas Jefferson

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself." - Thomas Jefferson

"No instance exists of a person’s writing two languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth." - Thomas Jefferson

"A state of conscience is higher than a state of innocence." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy." - Thomas Merton

"For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing." - Thomas Merton

"For evil news rides post, while good news baits." - Thomas Middleton

"For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king and there ought to be no other." - Thomas Paine

"His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground." - Thomas Paine

"If in spite of these facts we wish to maintain that mysticism is ultimately the source and essence of all religion, we shall have on our hands a set of problems very similar to those which beset the mystical theory of ethics. We shall have to maintain that mystical consciousness is latent in all men but is in most men submerged below the surface of consciousness. Just as it throws up into the upper consciousness influences which appear in the form of ethical feelings, so must its influences appear there in the form of religious impulses. And these in turn will give rise to the intellectual constructions which are the various creeds... The general conclusion regarding the relations between mysticism on the one hand and the area of organized religions (Christian, Buddhist, etc.) on the other is that mysticism is independent of all of them in the sense that it can exist without any of them. But mysticism and organized religion tend to be associated with each other and to become linked together because both look beyond earthly horizons to the Infinite and Eternal, and because both share the emotions appropriate to the sacred and the holy." - W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace

"Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself." - William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett

"When a man has married a wife he finds out whether her knees and elbows are only glued together." - William Blake

"They fix attention, heedless of your pain, with oaths like rivets forced into the brain; and e'en when sober truth prevails throughout, they swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt." - William Cowper

"We have here the fundamental problem of ethics, the crux of the theory of moral conduct. What is justice? -shall we seek righteousness, or shall we seek power? -is it better to be good, or to be strong?" - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"In the Middle West now you got to put a brand on your soil, then in the Spring go on a round-up looking for it." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"What this country needs is more working men and fewer politicians." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

"I perceive I have not really understood anything, not a single object, and that no man ever can, Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me, because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof." - Walter Lippmann

"What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Homeric and the pre-Homeric Greeks, like oral peoples generally, practiced public speaking with great skill long before their skills were reduced to an "art", that is, to a body of sequentially organized, scientific principles which explained and abetted what verbal persuasion consisted in. Such an "art" is presented in Aristotle"s Art of Rhetoric. Oral cultures, as has been seen, can have no "arts" of this scientifically organized sort. The "art" of rhetoric, though concerned with oral speech, was, like other "arts," the product of writing." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"The greatest barrier to own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing." - Wayne Muller

"Peaceableness toward enemies is an idea that will, of course, continue to be denounced as impractical. It has been too little tried by individuals, much less by nations. It will not readily or easily serve those who are greedy for power. It cannot be effectively used for bad ends. It could not be used as the basis of an empire. It does not afford opportunities for profit. It involves danger to practitioners. It requires sacrifice. And yet it seems to me that it is practical, for it offers the only escape from the logic of retribution. It is the only way by which we can cease to look to war for peace. ... Peaceableness is not passive. It is the ability to act to resolve conflict without violence. If it is not a practical and practicable method, it is nothing. As a practicable method, it reduces helplessness in the face of conflict. In the face of conflict, the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one." - Wendell Berry

"The key statement about anyone's life is the redemption of the manifestation, through depth understanding that bypasses social conditioning, spiritual materialism, defenses and preferences." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible." - Wallace Stevens

"Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes)." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Let us...take the most concrete example of state capitalism...It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Napoleon, I think, wrote: “On s’engage et puis ... on voit.” rendered freely this means: “First engage in a serious battle and then see what happens. ” Well, we did first engage in a serious battle in October 1917. And now there can be no doubt that in the main we have been victorious." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel, that when we find one who is only weak, we are happy." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Your destiny is that of a man, and your vows those of a god." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly colored than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily…he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"I who have set my heart on watching over the soul, in union with Good Thought, and as knowing the rewards of Mazda Ahura for our works, will, while I have power and strength, teach men to seek after Right. I have become an alien in a foreign land." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't." - Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum

"One should performed karma for the benefit of humanity with an unbiased approach because bias gives birth to evil, which creates thousands of obstacles in our path." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"One should respect his motherland, his culture and his mother tongue because they are givers of happiness." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"A woman who possesses all the qualities will quite naturally not have any problem in fulfilling her obligations towards her family and quite obviously keep everybody in the family happy and satisfied. A house in which such a woman dwells is always prosperous and full of comforts and luxuries." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"All are wicked to some extent or other. Therefore, everyone needs correction; and everyone has to be educated and guided into the right path." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda