Great Throughts Treasury

"If we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth's ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world. But we will also see through the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man's only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place - a much humbler place than we have been taught to think - in the order of creation." - Wendell Berry

"I loathe popular pulp, I loathe go-go gangs, I loathe jungle music, I loathe science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories. I especially loathe vulgar movies—cripples raping nuns under tables, or naked-girl breasts squeezing against the tanned torsos of repulsive young males. And, really, I don't think I mock popular trash more often than do other authors who believe with me that a good laugh is the best pesticide." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"What makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Better is the enemy of good." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"But is laughter a synonym for joy? To give one's entire talent to a production is the greatest triumph that anyone can achieve." - Victor Hugo

"In the twilight, it was a vision of power." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"Not since Manhattan Island was sold for $24 has there been so much dirt available for so little money as now." - Vance Havner

"The church is a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints." - Vance Havner

"The greatest ability is dependability." - Vance Havner

"In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised - but by things that they expect." - Tristan Bernard, born Paul Bernard

"Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction"." - Tryon Edwards

"The first evil choice or act is linked to the second; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny." - Tryon Edwards

"If a cat wants to eat her kittens, she'll say that they look like mice." - Turkish Proverbs

"The devil tempts all, but the idle tempt the devil." - Turkish Proverbs

"Who sows wind will reap a storm." - Turkish Proverbs

"So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that's where you will find success. On the far side of failure." - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

"There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,— Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty, And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. The Taming of the Shrew. Act v. Sc. 2." - William Shakespeare

"Cesario, by the roses of the spring, by maidhood, honor, truth, and everything, I love thee so, that maugre all thy pride, nor wit nor reason can my passion hide." - William Shakespeare

"But who does not see that in a disbelieved or doubted or interrogative or conditional proposition, the ideas are combined in the same identical way in which they are in a proposition which is solidly believed." - William James

"The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds." - William James

"Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful." - William Morris

"Now I see our lances are but straws, our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, that seeming to be most which we indeed least are." - William Shakespeare

"Now the good gods forbid That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude Towards her deserved children is enrolled In Jove's own book, like an unnatural dam Should now eat up her own!" - William Shakespeare

"O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)" - William Shakespeare

"Profaneness is a brutal vice. - He who indulges in it is no gentleman. - I care not what his stamp may be in society, or what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts. - Despite all his refinement, the light and habitual taking of God's name in vain, betrays a coarse and brutal will." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin

"I slept peacefully that night, feeling exultant and determined. Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naively think that with their love they can change the man they love." - Elif Safak

"SIR TOBY BELCH: Does not our life consist of the four elements? SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK: Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking. SIR TOBY BELCH: Thou'rt a scholar; therefore let us eat and drink." - William Shakespeare

"So mak'st thou faith an enemy to faith; and, like a civil war, sett'st oath to oath, thy tongue against thy tongue." - William Shakespeare

"Some falls the means are happier to rise. Cymbeline (Caius Lucius at IV, ii)" - William Shakespeare

"A family in my sister's neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, Dear God, that family needs grace. She replied firmly, That family needs casseroles, and proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this IS grace." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering away your life on silly trifles." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Caution is the parent of safety." - English Proverbs

"Every man has a fool in his sleeve." - English Proverbs

"He who would catch fish must not mind getting wet." - English Proverbs

"The devil is not so black as he is painted." - English Proverbs

"The devil knows many things because he is old." - English Proverbs

"The devil looks after his own." - English Proverbs

"The devil lurks behind the cross." - English Proverbs

"The devil rebuking sin." - English Proverbs

"The difference is wide that sheets will not decide." - English Proverbs

"When the fox preaches, take care of your geese." - English Proverbs

"I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot, i.e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"The fish who is in the weir will want out, who is outside will want inside the weir." - Estonian Proverbs

"The Sabbath is a time to “unplug”." - Eugene Peterson

"Or rather, I inherited the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy, none of the strength of the steel that made it. I am sired by gold and damned by it, as they say at the race track — damned in more ways than one." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill