Great Throughts Treasury

"Snakes and spiders symbolize the underworld Feminine, a symbol of the sensate world and the physical body. They are associated with the mystery of the creation of the world. This is viewed negatively in the West, yet if one has only known the Divine Mother in its beautific state, its caring, nurturing aspect, at some point you are going to have to encounter its wrathful side, that devours, that enmeshes and consumes, and to honor those forces. Every great thing is birthed out of its counterpart. When you are going through a descent mystery, there is a difference between being dragged into it, and consciously going through the descent. When you are going through a descent, you need to remember you have to submit to its forces, not yours, and unless you are willing to submit to it, which means even dismemberment and death in the process, don’t bother." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"The words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of success and happiness: ONE WITH LIFE, being one with NOW. You don’t live your life, life lives you. Life is the dancer and you are the dance." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"When you discover your mission, you will feel it's demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone

"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming

"To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge - knowledge for leadership of transformation." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming

"Down with this contemptible fraud! There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be “equality” between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters. There cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be real “freedom” as long as there is no freedom for women from the privileges which the law grants to men, as long as there is no freedom for the workers from the yoke of capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and merchants." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"It is obvious that a white-guard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men will) dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organize immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"One must not count in thousands, like the propagandist belonging to a small group that has not yet given leadership to the masses; in these circumstances one must count in millions and tens of millions." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more variated than anyone could have expected." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organization and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted — or rather tend to be corrupted — by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Worst of all, it is women who usually have to do, usually alone, all the dirty work of the kitchen and household, work that is unimportant, hard, tiresome, and soul-destroying." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"One of the by-products of the state of dhyan is that fearlessness is awakened. Fearlessness is very different from bravery. Bravery is an attribute of the mind, which can be and has been cultivated by the state, religion and family for their own purpose, but it is an attribute that can also be lost. Once fearlessness is awakened it can never be extinguished, fear no longer enters the mind. Fearlessness is awakened when man has faith either in his own understanding or has faith in the Universal Intelligence." - Vimala Thakar

"Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Kay Arr, said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say Kay Arr close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper's, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which, concussing, broke. A marvelous discovery indeed - that the human voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scientific) can quicken trees into life!" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs. Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr. Bankes’s glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr. Bankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw there. ‘But why different, and how different?’ she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do her bidding tomorrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found a crumpled glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness. She was willful; she was commanding (of course, Lily reminded herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune of Mrs. Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on one’s bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her beauty was always that—hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it might be—Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr. Carmichael snuffling and sniffing; Mr. Bankes saying, The vegetable salts are lost. All this she would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the window, in pretense that she must go,—it was dawn, she could see the sun rising,—half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing, insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole world whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs. Ramsay cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs. Ramsay had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs. Ramsay listening; shaded lights and regular breathing." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Self-righteousness loves to pounce on an evil which by sheer accident is not its particular evil." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"You are really one note in the Cosmic Music, harmonizing with other notes to form a grand symphony." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"This is a request from a lady (I sincerely hope). She is an elderly lady. Ah she's an old lady... you might as well face it." - Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum

"Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Him that hates us, O earth, him that battles against us, him that is hostile towards us with his mind and his weapons, do thou subject to us, anticipating (our wish) by deed." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The almighty God reveals his presence through Nature or in other words it can also be said that Nature is the 'visible' part of God and in the same manner vice versa is also true... both are inseparable... each being the extension of other. There is no distinction between the two and one is absorbed in the other." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"What little man has to accomplish must be done quickly, at the place that is assigned to him and within the time that is allotted to him. And, man has such a formidable task before him; it is to fulfill it that he has come as man, exchanging for this human habitat all the merit he has acquired during many past lives. The task is no less than the manifestation of the Divinity latent in man." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Your eyes should not seek evil sights; your ears should not seek evil tales; your tongue should not seek evil speech; your hands should not seek evil acts; your minds should not seek evil thoughts." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"Let us redeem our great words from base uses. Let that no longer call itself Love, which knows that it is not free!" - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"The priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of interference." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"The reader will understand that I despise these yellows; they are utterly without honor, they are vulgar and cruel; and yet, in spite of all their vices, I count them less dangerous to society than the so-called respectable papers, which pretend to all the virtues, and set the smug and pious tone for good society — papers like the New York Tribune and the Boston Evening Transcript and the Baltimore Sun, which are read by rich old gentlemen and maiden aunts, and can hardly ever be forced to admit to their columns any new or vital event or opinion. These are kept papers, in the strictest sense of the term, and do not have to hustle on the street for money. They serve the pocketbooks of the whole propertied class — which is the meaning of the term respectability in the bourgeois world. On the other hand the yellow journals, serving their own pocketbooks exclusively, will often print attacks on vested wealth, provided the attacks are startling and sensational, and provided the vested wealth in question is not a heavy advertiser." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"There are no right answers to wrong questions." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not." - Václav Havel

"At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA)." - Václav Havel

"To err is human, there is none who has not erred some time or other." - Valmiki NULL

"Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry." - Vannevar Bush

"To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." - Tripitaka or Tipitaka NULL

"He who walks in obedience, following God the second half, living the life of inner prayer of submission and exultation, on him God's holiness takes hold as a mastering passion of life. Yet ever he cries out in abysmal sincerity, "I am the blackest of all the sinners of the earth. I am a man of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts." For humility and holiness are twins in the astonishing birth of obedience in the heart of men. So God draws unworthy us, in loving tenderness, up into fellowship with His glorious self." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"And let me again remind you that it is only by working with an energy which is almost superhuman and which looks to uninterested spectators like insanity that we can accomplish anything worth the achievement." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition." - Thucydides NULL

"Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights." - Thurgood Marshall

"Every evening, write down the six most important things that you must do the next day. Then while you sleep your subconscious will work on the best ways for you to accomplish them. Your next day will go much more smoothly." - Tom Hopkins