Great Throughts Treasury

"It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

"Live this day as if the last." - William Shaw Kerr

"Learning consists in adding one’s stock day by day. The practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day: subtracting and yet again subtracting until one has reached inactivity." -

"To overcome your negative habits, view each day as if it is the first day of your life. Have a fresh view of things each and every day." - Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

""Know thyself" means: devote time each day to studying yourself... ferreting out your weakness, working at self-improvement, purifying your immortal soul." - Israel Salanter Lipkin

"Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly." - James Russell Lowell

"We die every day; every moment deprives us of a portion of life and advances us a step toward the grave; our whole life is only a long and painful sickness." - Jean Baptiste Massillon

"Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. Climb slowly, steadily, enjoying each passing moment; and the view from the summit will serve as a fitting climax for the journey." -

"Time presupposes a view of time. It is, therefore, not like a river, not a flowing substance. The fact that the metaphor based on this comparison has persisted from the time of Heraclitus to our own day is explained by our surreptitiously putting into the river a witness of its course." - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"If a person learns to be grateful to the Creator because he is allowed to awake in the morning, then every day is begun with a feeling of gratitude for an additional day of life." - Avigdor Miller

"In a life well lived, each succeeding day becomes better than the last. Each day, each year, each experience does not stand alone; it cannot be separated from what has happened before or what may happen after. Yesterday determines today, and today helps determine tomorrow." - John Homer Miller

"Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good." - Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle

"Man gains freedom only through the use of his highest faculties. Materialism makes him more and more a slave to the forces of the phenomenal world... Our present-day materialism points in this direction - that is, in the direction of the enslavement of man by mechanisation and by its direct results, by state organisations, uniformity, the sacrifice of independent intelligence, the sweeping away of individual differences, local customs, local diversity, and all the infinite branchings of humanity that enrich life... Man is made free by ‘truth’. The truth spoken here is equated with mind. This kind of truth begins with self-knowledge." - Maurice Nicoll

"The purpose of life is to find the truth and make it come into everything you do, from one end of the day to the other." - Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor

"I believe that being true to the self is the most important thing in life - to have a free heart, a pure soul and a pure mind. We all live, or should live, for the fulfillment of the self. We are all mirror images of each other; whatever we feel in ourselves we feel in others. I believe that we create our own lives... Intuition should play the main role in everything we do. Through the creative source of the mind and the unlimited power of the spirit all our deepest wishes come true. For me the meaning is that we are all one, and the only true reality is the spirit. Believing in the power of spirit is simply to have a passion for life, to learn, to grow, to evolve and most of all to love, and live each day and each moment of the day to the fullest." - Tatjana Patitz

"One of the chief reasons for success in life is the ability to maintain a daily interest in one's work, to have a chronic enthusiasm, to regard each day as important." - William Lyon Phelps

"The highest of characters, in my estimation, is his who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of some himself; and at the same time as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL

"Be patient in little things. Learn to bear the every-day trials and annoyances of life quietly and calmly, and then, when unforeseen trouble or calamity comes, your strength will not forsake you. There is much difference between genuine patience and sullen endurance, as between the smile of love, and the malicious gnashing of the teeth." - William Swan Plumer

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday." - Alexander Pope

"A noble part of every true life is to learn to undo what has been wrongly done. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser to-day that he was yesterday." - Alexander Pope

"A single day in the life of a learned man is worth more than the lifetime of a fool." - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL

"Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last." - Publius Syrus

"You can never tell what to wish for or what to avoid: so each day mocks you." - Publius Syrus

"The meaning of life has something to do with realizing that our essence is perfect love, then going on to live our lives upon that truth, experiencing each day as a miracle and every act as sacred." - Kenneth Ring

"Let us think only of spending the present day well. then when tomorrow shall have come, it will be called today, and then we will think about it." - John Charles Salak

"Among the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to worldly success, there is one, the importance of which is more real, and which is generally underrated in our day... It is courtesy." - Herbert Schiffer

"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life." -

"If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life; nor will you long for the approach of night, being tired of the day; nor will you be a burden to yourself, nor your society insupportable to others." -

"Nobody enters his good deeds in his day-book." -

"There is no man who does not die his own death... No one dies except upon his own day." -

"Count the day lost, whose low descending sun views from thy hand no worthy action done." - Leland Stanford, fully Amasa Leland Stanford

"The absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all condition - the victory of man - all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death! But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men to-day man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an attribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence." - Paul Tyner

"I will this day try to live a simple, sincere, and serene life; repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike trust in God." - John H. Vincent, fully John Heyl Vincent

"The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensures, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"To say that people have a moral sense is not the same thing as saying that they are innately good. A moral sense must compete with other senses that are natural to humans - the desire to survive, acquire possessions, indulge in sex, or accumulate power - in short, with self-interest narrowly defined. How that struggle is resolved will differ depending on our character, our circumstances, and the cultural and political tendencies of the day. But saying that a moral sense exists is the same thing as saying that humans, by their nature, are potentially good." - James Q. Wilson

"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." - Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom NULL

"To be happy: Live one day at a time. Take advantage of what you already have. Have a sense of humor. Set some priorities. Make a change and stick to it. Forgive and forget. Count your blessings." -

"Count that day lost, whose slow descending views from thine hand no worthy action done." -

"A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, abut the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides." - Owen D. Young

"That one who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day in which he lives, needs to reorganize his life. And the sooner the better, for pure enjoyment throughout life has more to do with one's happiness and efficiency than almost any other single element." - George Matthew Adams

"People who are in despair always make a mistake when they hang themselves; the next day often brings the unknown." -

"My care is to-day; who knows the morrow?" - Anacreon NULL

"Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow, make yourself good while life and power are still yours." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Tomorrow comes to us untarnished by human living. No human eyes have seen it and no one can tell what it is going to be. The Chinese word for tomorrow (mingtien) means "bright day." There is the wisdom of sages and the rapture of the poets in that image." - Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of every-day life." - Berthold Auerbach

"Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its passing it brought me other hopes and other memories. " - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"The man who graduates to-day and stops learning to-morrow is uneducated the day after." - Newton D. Baker, fully Newton Diehl Baker, Jr.

"It is easier to be a lover that a husband for the simpler reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day that to say pretty things from time to time." - Honoré de Balzac

"In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years." -