Great Throughts Treasury

"In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves." - John Stuart Mill

"The cause of profit is that labor produces more than is required for its support." - John Stuart Mill

"Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsel." - Joseph Addison

"The secret cause of all suffering is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed." - Joseph Campbell

"Two sorts of writers possess genius; those who think and those who cause others to think." - Joseph Roux

"The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues." - Joseph Roux

"The time will come when looking in the mirror grieves you, and that grief will be another cause of wrinkles." - Latin Proverbs

"Inequality is the cause of all local movements." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

"Education, more than nature, is the cause of that great difference which we see in the characters of men." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -

"To be brave for one short instant is no hard matter; it is easier to die for a cause than to live for it." - Madame La Comtesse, Diane de Vobrillac (Marie de Beausacq)

"A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”" - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"In revolutions there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them." -

"In revolutions there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all." - Norman Vincent Peale

"A bad cause should be silent." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

"No matter what his present state, man can change for the better through self-control, discipline, and following proper diet and health laws. Why do you think you cannot change? Mental laziness is the secret cause of all weakness." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"We would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don’t want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created." - Plato NULL

"The cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved; so that he passes a wrong judgment on what is just, good and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love, neither himself nor his own thins, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself, or by another." - Plato NULL

"Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"Crime is honest for a good cause." -

"All the physicians I have ever seen call themselves believers, but are materialists; they believe only in the existence of matter, and not in matter as an appearance, but as substance, and do not consider template a cause. Their idea of spirit is a chemical agent." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody’s name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The man was born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him and for this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Talent for talents’ sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they are called cause, operation and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but we will call the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and the love of beauty. These three are equal. The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances, Strong men believe in cause and effect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to a new power as a benefactor." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All Spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, “God comes to see us without bell”: that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Cause and effect are two sides of one fact." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The moral cause of the world lies behind all else in the mind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Until he has been part of a cause larger than himself, no man is truly whole." -

"There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness." - Robert Burton

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

"A man never outlives his conscience, and that, for this cause only, he cannot outlive himself." -

"Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortab’e enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more." -

"Excess is not the only thing that breaks up both health and enjoyment; many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth, which is both a great sin, and the cause of many more." -

"I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Man has free choice. Otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain... Free choice is the cause of its own movement, because by his free choice man moves himself to act." -

"Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL

"Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause - a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence." -

"The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as a leader." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves." -

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." -

"Do nothing to others which, if done to you, would cause you pain." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL

"Any love which depends on a cause, once the cause disappears, the love disintegrates; but a love independent of any cause will never disintegrate." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL