Great Throughts Treasury

"They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?" - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Be a herald of God’s goodness, for God rules over you, unworthy though you are. Although your debt to Him is so very great, He is not seen exacting payment from you; and from the small works you do, He bestows great rewards upon you. Do not call God just, for His justice is not manifest in things concerning you." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"Do you think it is only a little thing to possess a house from which lovely things can be seen?" - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thought by those of reason." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Than whom there is naught else higher, than whom there is naught smaller, naught greater, the One stands like a tree established in heaven. By Him, the Person, is this whole universe filled." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault." - Sydney J. Harris

"Our hatred knows no bounds, and the war shall be to the death." - Simón Bolívar, fully Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco

"The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry." - Simone Weil

"The guiding of man, the most variable and manifold of creatures, seems to me in very deed to be the art of arts and the science of sciences." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"To impress the truth upon a soul when it is still fresh, like wax not yet subjected to the seal, is an easier task than inscribing pious doctrine on top of inscriptions—I mean wrong doctrines and dogmas—with the result that the former are confused and thrown into disorder by the latter." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"Now what greater comfort is there than this, that there is one presides in the world who is so wise he cannot be mistaken, so faithful he cannot deceive, so pitiful he cannot neglect his people, and so powerful that he can make stones even to be turned into bread if he please!" - Stephen Charnock

"It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"My hat's in the ring. The fight is one and I'm stripped to the buff." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The vast world rainless, one may bid adieu to charity and penance." - Thiruvalluvar NULL

"A healthy hatred of scoundrels." - Thomas Carlyle

"All history . . . is an inarticulate Bible." - Thomas Carlyle

"Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?" - Thomas Carlyle

"One of the most essential preparations for eternity is delight in praising God; a higher acquirement, I do think, than even delight and devotedness in prayer." - Thomas Chalmers

"From behind the shadow of the still small voice--more awful than tempest or earthquake--more sure and persistent than day and night--is always sounding full of hope and strength to the weariest of us all, Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." - Thomas Hughes

"Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him." - Thomas Merton

"There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life, we are made for an act that gathers up all the powers and capacities of our being and offers them simultaneously and forever to God. The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely that our owns lives have a particular importance and purpose, and which urges us to find out our vocation, seeks in so doing to bring us to a decision that will dedicate our lives irrevocably to their true purpose. The man who loses this sense of his own personal destiny, and who renounces all hope of having any kind of vocation in life has either lost all hope of happiness or else has entered upon some mysterious vocation that God alone can understand." - Thomas Merton

"We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!" - Thomas Merton

"The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain." - Thomas Paine

"After a child or two, that sort runs to fat, and you find you have married more of her than you bargained for." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"You never know how much a man can't remember until he is called as a witness." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"The well-known maxim, "While there is life there is hope," has a deeper meaning in reverse: "While there is hope there is life." Hope comes first, life follows. Hope gives power to life. Hope rouses life to continue, to expand, to grow, to reach out, to go on. Hope sees a light where there isn't any. Hope lights candles in millions of despairing hearts. Hope is the miracle medicine of the mind. It inspires the will to live. Hope is the physician's strongest ally. Hope is man's shield and buckler against defeat. "Hope," wrote Alexander Pope, "springs eternal in the human breast." And as long as it does man will triumph and move forward. Hope never sounds retreat. Hope keeps the banners flying. Hope revives deals, renews dreams, revitalizes visions. Hope scales the peak, wrestles with the impossible, achieves the highest aim. "The word which God has written on the brow of every man," wrote Victor Hugo, "is Hope." As long as man has hope no situation is hopeless." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Life springs from thousands of sources vibrant, hands up everyone who cling to, refuses to be expressed in phrases tedious, only accepts actions transparent, truthful words of love and pleasure" - Wilhelm Reich

"A man, yet by these tears a little boy again, throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, a reminiscence sing." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The past and the present wilt. I have fill’d them, emptied them, and proceed to fill my next fold of the future." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for." - Walter Savage Landor

"Choose to see death as simply removing a garment or moving from one room to another... it's merely a transition." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"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

"The more you see yourself as what you'd like to become, and act as if what you want is already there, the more you'll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Morally, the life of the organization must be of exemplary nature. This is one phase where the organization must not have criticism." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness." - Victor Hugo

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow." - Victor Hugo

"No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"A person who is respectful towards his land, civilization and language, attains greatness and he acquires all the happiness of life. His deeds should be such that makes the motherland, the culture and language proud." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"A person who performs good Karma (deeds) is always held in high esteem." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"A modern philosopher once said: Only a God can save us now." - Václav Havel

"Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it." - Tryon Edwards

"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 United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down." - Thurgood Marshall

"And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." - William Shakespeare