Great Throughts Treasury

"I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection." - Luther Burbank

"Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness." - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma

"It's in the fight, in the striving, in the mountains unclimbed that fulfillment lies, so if you have nothing to strive for, you have nothing to make you happy. When it comes to "for better" or "for worse," "for better" is often harder on a marriage." - Merle Shain

"The game is my wife. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace." - Michael Jordan, fully Michael Jeffrey Jordon, aka MJ, Air Jordan and His Airness

"Self-esteem is the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. It consists of two components: 1) self-efficacy—confidence in our ability to think, learn, choose, and make appropriate decisions; and 2) self-respect—confidence in our right to be happy; and in the belief that achievement, success, friendship, respect, love and fulfillment are appropriate to us." - Nathaniel Branden

"Fulfillment of a particular desire seems necessary only if one lacks conviction that he can find perfect fulfillment in God. One who is at peace in God is not tortured by unfulfilled earthly desires." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Consider whether fulfillment of the goal you have chosen will constitute success. What is success? If you possess health and wealth, but have trouble with everybody (including yourself), yours is not a successful life. Existence becomes futile if you cannot find happiness. When wealth is lost, you have lost a little; when health is lost, you have lost something of more consequence; but when peace of mind is lost, you have lost the highest treasure." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Be winged arrows aiming at fulfillment and goal." - Paul Klee

"Joy has something within itself which is beyond joy and sorrow. This something is called blessedness... It preserves in itself its opposite, sorrow. It provides the foundation for happiness and pleasure. It is present in all levels of man’s striving for fulfillment. It consecrates and directs them. It does not diminish or weaken them. It does not take away the risks and dangers of the joy of life. It makes the joy of life possible in pleasure and pain, in happiness and unhappiness, in ecstasy and sorrow. Where there is joy, there is fulfillment. And where there is fulfillment, there is joy. In fulfillment and joy the inner aim of life, the meaning of creation, and the end of salvation are attained." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich

"To seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is to avoid reality, the reality of other beings and the reality of ourselves. But only the fulfillment of what we really are can give us joy. Joy is nothing else than the awareness of our being fulfilled in our true being, in our personal center. And this fulfillment is possible only if we unite ourselves with what others really are. It is reality that gives joy and reality alone." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich

"I would like to suggest that the educated audience often uses "art" films in much the same self-indulgent way as the mass audience uses the Hollywood "product," finding wish fulfillment in the form of cheap and easy congratulation on their sensitivities and their liberalism." - Pauline Kael

"The good fight is the one we run on behalf of our dreams. If they flare up with a vengeance in our youth, we do have a lot of courage, but we have not yet learned to fight. If we have learned to deal with many troubles, has left us the courage to fight. Therefore, we turn against ourselves and our worst enemies. We say that our childish dreams, were too difficult to realize or just so touched that we had from the realities of life do not know. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to take the good fight… The first symptom that we are killing our dreams is that we never have time. The most busy people I've met in my life were at the same time those who had always time for everything. Those who did nothing were always tired, did not realize how little they made, and complained constantly about the fact that the day was too short. In truth, they were afraid to fight the good fight. The second symptom that our dreams are dead, our certainties. Because we see life not as a big adventure, which it is to live, we believe in the end, that we are the few things we have asked of life, wise, just and behave properly…. The third symptom of the death of our dreams is finally peace. Life becomes one Sunday afternoon, nothing great demands of us want no more of us than we are willing to give. We then keep for ready to believe that we have overcome our childish fantasies and gain the fulfillment of personal and professional level. We are surprised when someone says, in our age, that he still expected life of this or that. But in truth, deep inside our hearts, we know that we have given it up in reality only to fight for our dreams to live the good fight. " - Paulo Coelho

"People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor. The fulfillment of humankind as human beings lies, then, in the fulfillment of the world. If for a person to be in the world of work is to be totally dependent, insecure, and permanently threatened--if their work does not belong to them--the person cannot be fulfilled. Work that is not free ceases to be a fulfilling pursuit and becomes an effective means of dehumanization." - Paulo Freire

"O what their joy and their glory must be, Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see! crowns for the valiant, for weary ones rest: God shall be all, and in all ever blest. Truly Jerusalem name we that shore, vision of peace that brings hope evermore; wish and fulfillment shall severed be ne'er, nor the thing prayed for come short of the prayer. There, where no trouble distraction can bring, we the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing, while for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise thy blessed people eternally raise. Now, in the meantime, with hearts raised on high, we for that country must yearn and must sigh, seeking Jerusalem, dear native land, through the long exile on Babylon's strand. Low before him with our praises we fall, of whom, and in whom, and through whom are all; of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son; through whom, the Spirit, with both ever one." - Pierre Abelard, aka Abailard or Abaelard or Habalaarz

"Desire increases when fulfillment is postponed." - Pierre Cornielle

"There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny. " - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"Rabbi Judah the Prince said: “Which is the proper course that a man should choose for himself? That which is an honor to him and elicits honor from his fellow men. Be as scrupulous about a light precept as of a weighty one, for you do not know the reward allotted for each precept. Balance the loss incurred by the fulfillment of a precept against the gain and the accruing from a transgression against the loss it involves. Reflect on three things and you will never come to sin: Know what is above you --a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all your deeds recorded in a book.”" - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL

"Thus is it to be seen that anyone revolting against the Church's authority under the unjust pretext that it is encroaching on the State's domain, is indeed thereby imposing limits to the Truth. He who holds it [i.e., the Church's authority] to be a stranger in a nation is also declaring that Truth must also be held to be something foreign in that nation. Those who fear that it will weaken the freedom and greatness of a people, are also obliged to admit that a people can be great and free without Truth. No, such a State, such a government or whatever other name may be given to it, cannot lay claim to its citizens' affection, because in waging war against Truth, it gravely strikes at that which is found to be most sacred in man. Such a government will be able to sustain itself through material and brute force; it will make itself feared through the sword; people will, through hypocrisy, self-interest or sheer slavishness: the people will obey because religion preaches and ennobles submission to the human powers that be, as long as they do not require that which is contrary to the holy laws of God. But if the fulfillment of these duties towards human authorities, in that which is compatible with the people's duty to God, renders their obedience more meritorious, it will not, for all that, become more tender, nor more joyful nor more spontaneous: never will it even deserve to be considered as venerable nor affectionate." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL

"A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment." - Albert Einstein

"The value and dignity of the individual is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with friction harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete. He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must 'die to self' if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute we must obey God rather than man." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Jews want to distinguish themselves from their fellow-citizens in no respect except through their own inherited of freely chosen form of worship... The state has the undeniable right to demand the fulfillment of general civic duties as a condition for granting civic rights; but there is no state in Germany in which Jews would not be ready to accept these duties and burdens." - Gabriel Riesser

"From this day forward, let each of us make a solemn commitment in his own heart: to bear his responsibility, to do his part, to live his ideals--so that together, we can see the dawn of a new age of progress for America, and together, as we celebrate our 200th anniversary as a nation, we can do so proud in the fulfillment of our promise to ourselves and to the world." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"We could talk further about the importance of finding an occupation that both gives you a sense of self-respect and provides the resources to live an autonomous life. We talk in Habits of the Heart, about these issues-how for many Americans, at various levels in the occupational hierarchy, the job somehow doesn't prove adequate in fulfilling one's autonomous self and often becomes a means-an instrument-to the acquisition of those resources which will allow one to live in a private lifestyle that will somehow fulfill this expectation that we will find this unique person-who we really are-and attain self-realization, self-fulfillment, happiness. The terms are several but they all point in the same direction. But when we press the question, "What are the criteria that tell us what happiness is or that define the wants that when they are satisfied will lead to self-realization?", then the confident tones that we have been hearing begin to falter. And instead of any clear notion of any content there is simply the reassertion of "Whatever for you that fulfillment or happiness may be." It is not surprising that Americans turn to psychology as the place that is focused on that inner self." - Robert Bellah, fully Robert Neelly Bellah

"The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural." - Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton

"The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." - Saint Paul, aka The Apostle Paul, Paul the Apostle or Saul of Tarsus NULL

"Have contempt for contempt." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Our Sages were enemies of ignorance. They regarded education, intellectual enlightenment, and the acquisition of knowledge as the first of all moral commandments. They viewed the dissemination of intellectual enlightenment among all classes of the population as the prime concern of the nation, and the training of a child's mind as the first and most sacred duty of fatherhood. They considered it a matter of conscience for every Jewish father to see that his child should not remain a boor and am ha'arets; no Jewish child must be allowed to grow up as an ignorant, uneducated person." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"’Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as a reward for a defense of our property a surrender of those inestimable privileges, to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone give value to that very property." - Samuel Adams

"Often you weep over our sins and our pride: tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds: in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us. Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life: by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness: through your gentleness we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead: your touch makes sinners righteous." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

"To think that we can have a viable human economy by destroying the earth economy is absurd." - Thomas Berry

"The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job." - Thomas Hardy

"The sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves." - Thomas Hobbes

"A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts." - Thomas Merton

"The artistic experience, at its highest, was actually a natural analogue of mystical experience. It produced a kind of intuitive of perception." - Thomas Merton

"You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right... The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important. In our age everything has to be a ‘problem.’ Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves. Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt, traveling from the area of anxiety to the area in which there is no anxiety or perhaps it may mean learning, from God, to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety. Fundamentally, as Max Picard points out, it probably comes to this: living in a silence which so reconciles the contradictions within us that, although they remain within us, they cease to be a problem." - Thomas Merton

"After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head." - Washington Irving

"The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them." - Wendell Berry

"I enjoyed the mathematics that I had time to learn. If I ever need or want to learn some more, I shall not be afraid to do so." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces." - Wallace Stevens

"In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American—on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion." - Wallace Stevens

"How is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I have been wounded but not yet slain. I shall lie here and bleed awhile. Then I shall rise and fight again. The title of champion may from time to time fall to others more than ourselves. But the heart, the spirit, and the soul of champions remains in Green Bay." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"Meaning is different from explanation and it certainly isn’t blame (no shame no blame really helps with seeing clearly, no?) I asked, “What is the cancer trying to tell me?” What is the story of this tumor? How does it fit into the narrative of my life?” The cancer seemed sweet to me. Well meaning. It was trying to hold all the undigested feelings and experiences I had raced right past in my headstrong, headlong race to save the world. She (the tumor felt like a little girl) became beloved. I owned her as my creation – not as my fault but as my perfectly crafted, unconscious, possibly deadly solution to the complex equation of my life. In one bundle it took on the world’s toxicity and my own reaction to it." - Vicki Robin

"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

"Well may he be content to live a hundred years who acts without attachment who works his work with earnestness, but without desire, not yearning for its fruits – he, and he alone. – Isha Upanishad" - Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

"The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound." - Van Wyck Brooks