Great Throughts Treasury

"The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul." - Rona Barrett born Rhona Bernstein, Mrs. William Trowbridge

"Life is a long lesson in humility." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet

"The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet

"Dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind." - Jonah Barrington, Sir Jonah Barrington

"As a stick, when once it is dry and stiff you may break it, but you can never bend it into a straighter posture; so doth the man become incorrigible who is settled and stiffened into vice." - Isaac Barrow

"Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like, bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt." - Isaac Barrow

"None are too wise to be mistaken, but few are so wisely just as to acknowledge and correct their mistakes, and especially the mistakes of prejudice." - Isaac Barrow

"Nothing has wrought more prejudice to religion, or brought more disparagement upon truth, than boisterous and unseasonable zeal." - Isaac Barrow

"Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor." - Isaac Barrow

"Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the farther on we go, the more we have to come back." - Isaac Barrow

"If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous." - Isaac Barrow

"Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness." - George Washington Barrow or Barrows

"Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions." - Alan Barth

"The absurd man is he who never changes." - Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy

"Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot." - John Bartlett

"As diamond cuts diamond, and one hone smoothes a second, all the parts of intellect are whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the result of their mutual sharpening, is character, too." -

"Character is a diamond that scratches every other stone." -

"Even pure thought is a glimpse of God." -

"Fine manners are like personal beauty, a letter of credit everywhere." -

"Freedom is not caprice, but room to enlarge." -

"Look at nature with science as a lens. The rock swarms, the clod dances; the mineral is but the vegetable stepping down, and the animal an ascending plant; the man, a beast extended; and the angel, a developed human soul." -

"Temperance to be a virtue must be free, and not forced." -

"We must learn that competence is better than extravagance, that worth is better than wealth, that the golden calf we have worshipped has no more brains than that one of old which the Hebrews worshipped. So beware of money and money’s worth as the supreme passion of the mind. Beware of the craving for enormous acquisition." -

"Courtesy is really nothing more than a form of friendliness." -

"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them." - Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

"Take the profit out of war." - Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

"Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine." -

"Principle never forgives and its logic is to kill." -

"It requires a strong constitution to withstand repeated attacks of prosperity." -

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought." - Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa

"Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in so doing you must let go of your subjective preoccupation with yourself.... Your poetry arises by itself when you and the object become one." - Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa

"Learn the rules well, and then forget them." - Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa

"Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council-chamber of thought." - Giambattista Basile, aka Giovan Battista Basile

"Men love little and often, women much are rarely." -

"Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them." - Anderson M. Baten

"Tolerance consists of seeing certain things with your heart instead of with your eyes." - Orlando A. Battistam, fully Orlando Aloysius Battista, aka O.A. Battista

"As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work." - Charles Pierre Baudelaire

"There can be no progress - real, moral progress - except in the individual and by the individual himself." - Charles Pierre Baudelaire

"The voice is a second face." - Gérard Bauër

"Man must realize his own unimportance before he can appreciate his importance." - R. M. Baumgardy

"I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth." - Richard Baxter

"Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease, the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will soon follow." - Richard Baxter

"In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity." - Richard Baxter

"Paganism attributes the creation of the world to blind chance." - Richard Baxter

"Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it brings you to the grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there. You love not death; love not the cause of death." - Richard Baxter

"You will cast away your cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youthful learning." - Richard Baxter

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." - T. H. Bayly, fully Thomas Haynes Bayly

"Those who refuse the long drudgery of thought, and think with the heart rather than the head, are ever the most fiercely dogmatic in tone." -

"Art is the soul of the people." - Romare Bearden, fully Romate Howard Bearden

"Let us cherish sympathy. By attention and exercise it may be improved in every man. It prepares the mind for receiving the impressions of virtue; and without it there can be no true politeness. Nothing is more odious than that insensibility which wraps a man up in himself and his own concerns, and prevents his being moved with either the joys or the sorrows of another." - James Beattie