Great Throughts Treasury

"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of eachother's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love'... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Then I squeezed roots and trunks into it from the tube, and modelled them a little with the brush. Yes, now they stand in it - shoot up out of it - stand firmly rooted in it." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"To give a truthful account of London society at that or indeed at any other time, is beyond the powers of the biographer or the historian. Only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it — the poets and the novelists — can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the cases where the truth does not exist. Nothing exists. The whole thing is a miasma — a mirage. To make our meaning plain — Orlando could come home from one of these routs at three or four in the morning with cheeks like a Christmas tree and eyes like stars. She would untie a lace, pace the room a score of times, untie another lace, stop, and pace the room again. Often the sun would be blazing over Southwark chimneys before she could persuade herself to get into bed, and there she would lie, pitching and tossing, laughing and sighing for an hour or longer before she slept at last. And what was all this stir about? Society. And what had society said or done to throw a reasonable lady into such an excitement? In plain language, nothing. Rack her memory as she would, next day Orlando could never remember a single word to magnify into the name something. Lord O. had been gallant. Lord A. polite. The Marquis of C. charming. Mr. M. amusing. But when she tried to recollect in what their gallantry, politeness, charm, or wit had consisted, she was bound to suppose her memory at fault, for she could not name a thing. It was the same always. Nothing remained over the next day, yet the excitement of the moment was intense. Thus we are forced to conclude that society is one of those brews such as skilled housekeepers serve hot about Christmas time, whose flavour depends upon the proper mixing and stirring of a dozen different ingredients. Take one out, and it is in itself insipid. Take away Lord O., Lord A., Lord C., or Mr. M. and separately each is nothing. Stir them all together and they combine to give off the most intoxicating of flavours, the most seductive of scents. Yet this intoxication, this seductiveness, entirely evade our analysis. At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever. Such monsters the poets and the novelists alone can deal with; with such something-nothings their works are stuffed out to prodigious size; and to them with the best will in the world we are content to leave it." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Your life belongs to you, not to the demands of others, and when you see this fully, their demands are powerless." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood... In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life." - Victor Hugo

"It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her." - Victor Hugo

"The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas." - Victor Hugo

"To love another person is to see the face of God" - Victor Hugo

"It is the duty of learned ones to ensure that the tribe of noble people keeps on growing. This they can do by means of proper guidance and tutelage." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"It is the duty of the husband to earn money and fulfill the needs of his wife. It is also his duty to keep her happy and satisfied. He should protect her and fulfill all her demands." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"It is urgent that everyone should inquire into the true, the pure and the permanent; for there is at present a delusion about values. Even the leaders of people are hugging the false hypothesis that happiness can be had by means of wealth or health, housing or clothing, or the cultivation of skills in handicraft and manufacture." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Render every thought into a flower worthy to be held in His Fingers; render every deed into a fruit, full of the sweet juice of Love fit to be placed in His Hand; render every tear holy and pure, fit to wash His Lotus Feet." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"I think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings to us an idea perhaps as old as humanity itself: that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depth of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe; we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us." - Václav Havel

"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge." - Václav Havel

"As long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems." - Vannevar Bush

"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool— so useful that it still exists." - Vannevar Bush

"The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more." - Vannevar Bush

"But the accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and Power; the accused person makes his defense, and he is immediately acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted or condemned." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"Commerce has made all winds her messengers; all climes her tributaries; all people her servants." - Tryon Edwards

"Do all that you can to stand, and then fear lest you may fall, and by the grace of God you are safe." - Tryon Edwards

"Duty performed is a moral tonic; if neglected, the tone and strength of both mind and heart are weakened, and the spiritual health undermined." - Tryon Edwards

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned." - Tryon Edwards

"If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. One who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach." - Tryon Edwards

"Whoever in prayer can say, Our Father, acknowledges and should feel the brotherhood of the whole race of mankind." - Tryon Edwards

"Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau ideal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy." - Thomas Love Peacock

"But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

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

"I have a sense of power in dealing with men collectively which I do not always feel in dealing with them singly... One feels no sacrifice of pride necessary in courting the favor of an assembly of men such as he would have to make in seeking to please one man." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"We have deprived ourselves of that liberty of transposition in the arrangement of words which the ancient languages enjoyed." - Hugh Blair

"This earth is a garden, this life a banquet, and it's time we realized that it was given to all life, animal and man, to enjoy." - Tom Brown, Jr.

"If you look at the data, the inner city that was the riot zone lost 55,000 jobs in the ten years from 1992 to 2002, instead of gaining a surplus of 50,000." - Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

"Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against desire, why not get better at fulfilling desire?" - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Can’t help it? Nonsense! What we are is up to us. Our bodies are like gardens and our willpower is like the gardener. Depending on what we plant—weeds or lettuce, or one kind of herb rather than a variety, the garden will either be barren and useless, or rich and productive. If we didn’t have rational minds to counterbalance our emotions and desires, our bodily urges would take over. We’d end up in ridiculous situations. Thankfully, we have reason to cool our raging lusts. In my opinion, what you call love is just an offshoot of lust. Othello, Act I, Scene 3" -

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform." - William Godwin

"The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children." - William Godwin

"Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel." - William Gurnall

"Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked." - William James

"Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do." - William James