Great Throughts Treasury

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The public, which has been wrong before and is wrong now, can accept only demons and angels on the stage" - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo

"How strange a vehicle it is, coming down unchanged from times of old romance, and so characteristically black, the way no other thing is black except a coffin — a vehicle evoking lawless adventures in the plashing stillness of night, and still more strongly evoking death itself, the bier, the dark obsequies, the last silent journey!" - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood." - Thomas Paine

"Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre." - Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer

"The artist fills space with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone." - Willem de Kooning

"Joint-stools were then created; on three legs up borne they stood. Three legs upholding firm a massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat." - William Cowper

"You know the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. My only solution would be to keep em both out one term and hire my good friend Henry Ford to run the whole thing, and give him a commission on what he saves us." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter; they can actually be transformed into each other. As a matter of fact, if two such particles, moving through space with a very high kinetic energy, collide, then many new elementary particles may be created from the available energy and the old particles may have disappeared in the collision. Such events have been frequently observed and offer the best proof that all particles are made of the same substance: energy. But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. All things are numbers is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature. The Greek philosophers thought of static forms and found them in the regular solids. Modern science, however, has from its beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries started from the dynamic problem. The constant element in physics since Newton is not a configuration or a geometrical form, but a dynamic law. The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. This is a problem which has not yet been solved." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

"What is inflated too much will burst into fragments. – Ethiopian Proverb" -

"Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Our second advantage relates to the allocation of the money our businesses earn. After meeting the needs of those businesses, we have very substantial sums left over. Most companies limit themselves to reinvesting funds within the industry in which they have been operating. That often restricts them, however, to a "universe" for capital allocation that is both tiny and quite inferior to what is available in the wider world. Competition for the few opportunities that are available tends to become fierce. The seller has the upper hand, as a girl might if she were the only female at a party attended by many boys. That lopsided situation would be great for the girl, but terrible for the boys." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate." - Washington Irving

"Affective fixation on the personality of a master, teacher, guru, is a serious obstacle to 'liberation': the person of the liberator becomes the gaoler... The Chinese Masters told their monks to kill the Buddha if by chance they met him." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quiet continuously a sense of their existence and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! — that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Very much screwed in the head by trying to get Roger's marriage chapter into shape; and also warmed by L. saying last night that he was fonder of me than I of him. A discussion as to which would mind the other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I live more in a world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. It’s strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"You may not be aware of this but Leonard Bernstein won another award, for explaining the music of igor Stravinsky... to Igor Stravinsky!" - Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum

"In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered..." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Just as the Sun is respected for providing heat and energy to the world, in the same manner you too can attain respect in this world by acquiring knowledge." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"Knowledge makes capable of earning knowledge. It inspires us to perform actions and as a result one acquires desired wealth." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him." - Thucydides NULL

"The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them." - Thucydides NULL

"On the poor use of grammar it's a matter of usage. If a house is off-plumb and rickety and lets in the wind, you blame the mason, not the bricks. Our words are up to the job. It's our syntax that's limiting." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live." - William Shakespeare

"As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honor for his valor; and death for his ambition." - William Shakespeare

"Local newspapers may be lulling themselves into a false sense of security by thinking they can reverse their subscriber loss somehow, some way. Barring some amazing innovation that no one has yet envisioned, and that’s certainly a possibility, print media subscriber loss will not be reversed under any circumstances. A company depending on unheard-of innovation for its survival is about as effective as you depending on the lottery to cover your retirement." - Drew Curtis

"SAMPSON: My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee. GREGORY: How! turn thy back and run? SAMPSON: Fear me not. Gregory: No, marry; I fear thee!" - William Shakespeare

"One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'" - Elizabeth Lesser

"Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Pro-choice supporters are often heard using the cool language of the courts and the vocabulary of rights. Americans who are deeply ambivalent about abortion often miss the sound of caring." - Ellen Goodman

"A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away." - Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"I was a poet who wrote an autobiography poetic without ceasing to beat at the gates of the impossible. I would not dare to speak of myth in my poetry, but there is a desire to question life. At the beginning I was skeptical, influenced by Schopenhauer . But in my verses of maturity I tried to hope, to beat the wall, to see what could be the other side of the wall, convinced that life has a meaning that escapes us. I knocked desperately as one who waits for a response." - Eugenio Montale

"The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards (i.e., everything is turned topsy turvy.)" - Euripedes NULL

"My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted to dash out of the house and leap in a taxi and say, Take me to Charles's unhealthy pictures. Well, I went, but the gallery after luncheon was so full of absurd women in the sort of hats they should be made to eat, that I rested a little--I rested here with Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys. Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"Man?s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world." - Hannah Arendt