Great Throughts Treasury

"Politeness does not always evince goodness, equity, complaisance, or gratitude, but it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly as he should be within." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal can't imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks indifferently." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect can never taste." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Religious contention is the devil’s harvest." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The greater the obstacle, the stronger the desire." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The greatest part of mankind employ their first years to make their last miserable." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The most amiable people are those who least wound the self-love of others." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as there are people useful to his fortune." - Jean de La Bruyère

"The strongest passion is fear." - Jean de La Bruyère

"There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We believe easily what we fear or what we desire." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We hope to grow old, and yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We never deceive for a good purpose; knavery adds malice to falsehood." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We never love heartily but once, and that is the first time we love." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We rarely repent of speaking little, but often of speaking too much." - Jean de La Bruyère

"We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much; a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows, but which all the world does not practice." - Jean de La Bruyère

"When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other fuel to judge thy work by; it is good, and made by a good worksman." - Jean de La Bruyère

"When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it." - Jean de La Bruyère

"When it is our duty to do an act of justice it should be done promptly. To delay is injustice." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness." - William Cullen Bryant

"Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force." - William Cullen Bryant

"He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being." - Samuel Egerton Brydges

"I have observed that vulgar readers almost always lose their veneration for the writings of the genius with whom they have had personal intercourse." - Samuel Egerton Brydges

"Duty by habit is to pleasure turned." - Samuel Egerton Brydges

"We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves." - John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir

"Every branch of knowledge which a good man possesses, he may apply to some good purpose." - Claudius Buchanan

"Orthodoxy can be learnt from others; living faith must be a matter of personal experience." - Wilhelm Büchsel, fully Wilhelm Karl von Gotthilf Büchsel

"Suffering should lead man to self-inspection... to the admission of errors... and to prayer and forgiveness." - Bűchler Sándor or Alexander Bűchler

"Hunger makes a thief of any man." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Growth itself contains the germ of happiness." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored - it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"The “resurrection” is not of the so-called dead, but of the living who are “dead” in the sense of never having entered upon true life." - Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

"The Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, the soul of man is immortal... the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all... the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain." - Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

"The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain." - Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

"The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, “appearing at intervals,” for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race; walking the earth and breathing the air with us, but at the same time walking another earth and breathing another air of which we know little or nothing, but which is, all the same, our spiritual life, as its absence would be our spiritual death. This new race is in act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth." - Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

"When a person who was self conscious only, enters into cosmic consciousness - he knows without learning certain things... that the universe is not a dead machine but a living presence... that in its essence and tendency it is infinitely good... that individual existence is continuous beyond what is called death." - Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

"All true love is founded on esteem." - George Villiers 2nd Duke of Buckingham

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of he who draws the carriage." - Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

"Anger will never disappear so long as there are thoughts of resentment in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten." - Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

"Be a lamp unto yourselves! Work out your liberation with diligence! Fill your mind with compassion!" - Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL