Great Throughts Treasury

"And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain!" - Emile Zola

"Bless God, he went as soldiers, his musket on his breast— grant God, he charge the bravest of all the martial blest! Please God, might I behold him in epauletted white—I should not fear the foe then—I should not fear the fight!" - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"It was not death, for I stood up, and all the dead lie down; it was not night, for all the bells put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, nor fire, for just my marble feet could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; the figures I have seen set orderly, for burial, reminded me of mine, as if my life were shaven and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key; and I was like midnight, some, when everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos,--stopless, cool, without a chance or spar,-- or even a report of land to justify despair." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"I am the only being whose doom no tongue would ask no eye would mourn I never caused a thought of gloom a smile of joy since I was born in secret pleasure — secret tears this changeful life has slipped away as friendless after eighteen years as lone as on my natal day." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"The wound religion receives from hypocrites is far more dangerous and incurable than that inflicted on it by the open and scandalous sinner. For religion is never brought into question by the enormous vices of an infamous person; all see and all abhor his sin. But when a man shall have his mouth full of piety and his hands full of wickedness, when he shall speak Scripture and live devilish, profess strictly and walk loosely, this lays a grievous stumbling–block in the way of others; and tempts them to think that all religion is but mockery, and that the professors of it are but hypocrites." - Ezekial Hopkins

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"Character is the one thing we make in this world and take with us into the next." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflection." -