Great Throughts Treasury

"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole." - Virginia Satir

"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other. "The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them." Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant. "Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumns trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labor, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his pocket-knife he started after her to follow this woman, this excitement, which seemed even with its back turned to shed on him a light which connected them, which singled him out, as if the random uproar of the traffic had whispered through hallowed hands his name, not Peter, but his private name which he called himself in his own thoughts." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"All good things come to anyone who refuses to be intimidated by his own despair." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Everyone possesses an internal self-correction system to which he must connect himself." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty." - Victor Hugo

"A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"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

"In between stimulus and response there is a space, in that space lies our power to choose our response in our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Man is originally characterized by his search for meaning rather than his search for himself. The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The noise of rifles and cannons woke us; the flashes of tracer bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief doctor dashed in and ordered us to take cover on the floor. One prisoner jumped on my stomach from the bed above me and with his shoes on. That awakened me all right! Then we grasped what was happening: the battle-front had reached us! The shooting decreased and morning dawned. Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white flag floated in the wind." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The truth-that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, I am here--I am here--I am life, eternal life.'" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"When we are no longer able to change a situation -- we are challenged to change ourselves." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Society cannot progress unless each citizen make his contribution and performs his duties." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Progress means nothing to presence." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the seeing of Meshe, and are in his eye. We are the pupils of his Eye... Our doing is his Seeing: our being is his Knowing." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping. Thus to Ged, who had lost faith in himself, Vetch had given him that gift that only a friend can give, the proof of unshaken, unshakeable trust." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then put it into practice, but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it — create it, as it were, from the material of the world, articulate it in the language of the world." - Václav Havel

"Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show solidarity to those who are only striving for it in uneasy conditions." - Václav Havel

"Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it." - Václav Havel

"I think [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about... We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble… And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand?" - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late years have all concurred to lead many men into the opinion that we were touching on a period big with the most important changes." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"Again and again mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me, and, taking my hand, have not only shed tears upon it, but they have added, `God bless you, Mr. President! Why should they pray God to bless me? I advised the Congress to create the situation that led to the death of their sons. I ordered their sons overseas. I consented to their sons' being put in the most difficult part of the battle line, where death was certain...Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war. They believe, and rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"You have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life" - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!" - Timothy Dwight, fully Timothy Dwight IV

"There are still people who believe in that and wake up every day believing it's possible, and invest their whole selves in that." - Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren

"Nor is there any reason to believe that sound conviction will be less permanent in its influence than sophistry and error." - William Godwin

"If we take the universe of fitting, countless coats fit backs, and countless boots fit feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones fit gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions fit realities, and countless truths are valid, tho' no thinker ever thinks them." - William James

"It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed." - William James

"Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs about us." - William James

"The best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: 'This is the real me!'" - William James

"The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgement passed on their failures by the opinion of the world." - William James

"The man who lives in his religious center of personal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self in perfectly definite ways." - William James

"The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfillment we can speak of is the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function." - William James

"The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one." - William James