Great Throughts Treasury

"A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism " - Richard Hofstadter

"Habits are formed, not at one stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that, unless vigilant care be employed, a great change may come over the character without our being conscious of any." - Richard Whately

"It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke." - Richard Whately

"Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors." - Richard Whately

"I'm called away by particular business - but I leave my character behind me." - Richard Brinsley Sheridan

"A society which values equality will attach a high degree of significance to differences of character and intelligence between different individuals, and a low degree of significance to economic and social differences between different groups. It will endeavor, in shaping its policy and organization, to encourage the former and to neutralize and suppress the latter, and will regard it as vulgar and childish to emphasize them when, unfortunately, they still exist." - R. H. Tawney, fully Richard Henry Tawney

"If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished (Proposal to reform welfare programs)." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"The ultimate test of a nation's character is not how it responds to adversity in war but how it meets the challenge of peace." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"We are faced this year with the choice between the work ethic that built this Nation's character and the new welfare ethic that could cause that American character to weaken." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather." - Robertson Davies

"During the fifties, for example, the American character appeared with some consistency that became a model of manhood adopted by many men: the Fifties male. He got to work early, labored responsibly, supported his wife and children and admired discipline. Reagan is a sort of mummified version of this dogged type. This sort of man didn't see women's souls well, but he appreciated their bodies; and his view of culture and America's part in it was boyish and optimistic. Many of his qualities were strong and positive, but underneath the charm and bluff there was, and there remains, much isolation, deprivation, and passivity. Unless he has an enemy, he isn't sure that he is alive. The Fifties man was supposed to like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide.... During the sixties, another sort of man appeared. The waste and violence of the Vietnam war made men question whether they knew what an adult male really was. If manhood meant Vietnam, did they want any part of it? Meanwhile, the feminist movement encouraged men to actually look at women, forcing them to become conscious of concerns and sufferings that the Fifties male labored to avoid." - Robert Bly

"The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg

"I have no politics, and no party, and no particular hope: only this is true, that beauty is very beautiful, and softens, and comforts, and inspires, and rouses, and lifts up, and never fails." - Edward Burne-Jones, fully Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet

"There is no pride on earth like the pride of intellect and science." - Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

"I would give nothing for that man's religion, whose very dog and cat are not the better for it." - Rowland Hill

"The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do." - Roy L. Smith, aka Mr. Methodist

"To see this place would truly be worth a trip to India in itself, and from the spirit of the religion that lived here one can learn more in an hour of viewing than from all the books ever written." - Rudolf Otto

"The Ego is a veil between humans and God’. In prayer all are equal." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"It is characteristic of the radical that he thinks of power as a force for good-so long as the power falls into his hands." - Russell Kirk

"There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth." - Russell Kirk

"The devil is poor, he has no God." - Russian Proverbs

"I have always been driven by some distant music-a battle hymn no doubt-for I have been at war from the beginning. I've never looked back before. I've never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis

"One of its [James A. Garfield’s assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the danger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country. This partisan bitterness is greatly aggravated by that system of appointments and removals which deals with public offices as rewards for services rendered to political parties or to party leaders. Hence crowds of importunate place-hunters of whose dregs Guiteau is the type. The required reform [of the civil service] will be accomplished whenever the people imperatively demand it, not only of their Executive, but also of their legislative officers. With it, the class to which the assassin belongs will lose their occupation, and the temptation to try to administer government by assassination will be taken away." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"It is convenient to distinguish the two kinds of experience which have thus been described, the experienc-ing and the experienc-ed, by technical words." - Samuel Alexander

"The great usefulness of speculation for mental life lies in its thus suspending practice and introducing consideration." - Samuel Alexander

"If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals." - S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall

"I believe that you can combine biblical principles and good business practices. I testified before Congress…on how to be honest and successful at the same time." - S. Truett Cathy

"Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God." - Saint Paul, aka The Apostle Paul, Paul the Apostle or Saul of Tarsus NULL

"The corruption of the best is the worst." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"Human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health." - Salvador Dalí, fully Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech

"When I win, I crow softly, if at all; and when I lose, I weep gently, if at all. I do not consider President Nixon's change of mind a surrender to me. I consider it a victory for the constitutional government in America." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress." - Samuel Adams

"The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. - Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom. It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams

"Everyone is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy -- so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius." - Samuel Butler

"The worst of governments are always the most changeable, and cost the people dearest." - Samuel Butler

"In this country my Lords... the individual subject... 'has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them'" - Samuel Horsley

"Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with idlers, and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal rambles, one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their eyes with a microscope; another exhibits the dust of of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend rings to a load­stone, and find that what they did yesterday, they can do again today. - Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable. - There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled: they mingle them, and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The maxim, in vino Veritas - that a man who is well warmed with wine will speak truth, may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose men in general to be liars; but, sir, I would not keep company with a fellow, who lies as long as he is sober, and whom you must make drunk before you can get a word of truth out of him." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control." - Samuel Smiles

"If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved." - Samuel Smiles

"It is energy - the central element of which is will - that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action." - Samuel Smiles

"It is natural to admire and revere really great men. They hallow the nation to which they belong, and lift up not only all who live in their time, but those who live after them. Their great example becomes the common heritage of their race; and their great deeds and great thoughts are the most glorious legacies of mankind." - Samuel Smiles

"Men cannot be raised in masses as the mountains were in he early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units; for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectively secured." - Samuel Smiles

"Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious." - Samuel Smiles

"The iron rail proved a magicians' road. It virtually reduced England to a sixth of its size. It brought the country nearer to the town and the town to the country.... It energized punctuality, discipline, and attention; and proved a moral teacher by the influence of example." - Samuel Smiles

"When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides." - Samuel Smiles

"Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify." - Sydney J. Harris

"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an "unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young—-a human activity which developed late." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud