Great Throughts Treasury

"A morning-rain has settled the dust in Weicheng; willows are green again in the tavern dooryard... Wait till we empty one more cup -- west of Yang Gate there'll be no old friends." - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

"Biotechnology, variety patenting, and other agribusiness innovations are intended not to help farmers or consumers but to extend and prolong corporate control of the food economy; they will increase the cost of food, both economically and ecologically." - Wendell Berry

"I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire." - Wendell Berry

"Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Man … always acts either self-loving, just for the hell of it, or God-loving, just for the heaven of it; his reasons, his appetites are secondary motivations. Man chooses either life or death, but he chooses; everything he does, from going to the toilet to mathematical speculation, is an act of religious worship, either of God or of himself." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Normally, when one passes someone on the street who is in pain, one either tries to help him, or one simply looks the other way. With a photo there's no human decision; you're not there; you can't turn away; you simply gape. It's a form of voyeurism." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"I have observed that it is no longer possible for one young man to speak unwarily to another not known to him, except in certain sections of the South and West, and certainly not with a book in his hand." - Walker Percy

"A man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day which I first knew with certainty that the red convertible was following us." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"But... but... Why do you feel, without cause could be suddenly so desperately unhappy?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me - and there are thousands like me - you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"You are not listening to me. You are making phrases about Byron. And while you gesticulate, with your cloak, your cane, I am trying to expose a secret told to nobody yet; I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"One can never be the judge of another's grief. That which is a sorrow to one, to another is joy. Let us not dispute with any one concerning the reality of his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries - each man has his own." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

"Human intelligence discovered a way of perpetuating itself, one not only more durable and more resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier." - Victor Hugo

"The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity." - Victor Hugo

"When liberty returns, I will return." - Victor Hugo

"You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it." - Victor Hugo

"As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"It is the duty of every individual to dedicate himself for the betterment and advancement of the country." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"When birds desire to chirp, lustily desire to chirp, may my call go there, as an arrow-point upon the shaft." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The love of glory is great fortunes between peoples." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?" - William Morris

"Love is Enough Love is enough though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover." - William Morris

"Love is enough: have no thought for to-morrow if ye lie down this even in rest from your pain, ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow." - William Morris

"He knows much of what men paint themselves would blister in the light of what they are." - Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune." - Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

"It was a clear, moonlit night a little after the tenth of the Eighth Month. Her Majesty, who was residing in the Empress's Office, sat by the edge of the veranda while Ukon no Naishi played the flute for her. The other ladies in attendance sat together, talking and laughing; but I stayed by myself, leaning against one of the pillars between the main hall and the veranda. 'Why so silent?' said Her Majesty. 'Say something. It is sad when you do not speak.' 'I am gazing at the autumn moon,' I replied. 'Ah yes,' she remarked. 'That is just what you should have said." - Sei Shōnagon

"Without thinking that death will come, I am absorbed in plans for the future. After having done the many and futile activities of this life I will leave utterly empty-handed. What a blunder; as I will certainly need an understanding of the excellent Dharma (proper conduct). So why not practice now?" - Padmasambhava, literally "Lotus-Born",aka "Second Buddha", better known as Guru Rinpoche (lit. "Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche NULL

"Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life and the labors of life reduce themselves." - Edwin Way Teale

"My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become THE imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test." - Ellen Goodman

"Of 'shunning Men and Women' — they talk of Hallowed things, aloud — and embarrass my Dog — He and I dont object to them, if they'll exist their side. I think Carlo would please you — He is dumb, and brave — I think you would like the Chestnut Tree, I met in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly — and I thought the Skies were in Blossom —" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"O, sheep if I do not eat you, you will eat me, said the hyena." - Ethiopian Proverbs

"The whole tribe of philosophers have fallen into the fame error with Locke. Some of them, who pretend that every perception leaves an image in the mind, in the same manner almost as a seal leaves its impression behind it, are not to be excepted: for what is the image of a perception, which is not the perception itself? The mistake is owing to this, that for want of having sufficiently considered the matter, they have mistaken, for the very perception of the object, some circumstances, or some general idea, which revive themselves in its stead. To avoid such mistakes, I shall here distinguish the different perceptions we are capable of feeling, and examine them each in their proper order." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

"For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

"The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"He lit his cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was at peace in another world than his. We both were happy. He talked of Julia and I heard his voice, unintelligible at a great distance, like a dog's barking miles away on a still night." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving." - Faith Baldwin

"That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." - Italian Proverbs