Great Throughts Treasury

"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease, and drowsy without tranquility." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Such is the constitution of man, that labor may be styled its own reward. - Nor will any external incitements be requisite if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a distinction produces rivalry." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The present state of things is the consequence of the past; and it is natural to inquire as to the sources of the good we enjoy or the evils we suffer. If we act oniy for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent; if intrusted with the care of others, it is not just." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"But it is pretty to see what money will do." - Samuel Pepys

"It is better to be thought perverse than insincere." - Samuel Richardson

"Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to overestimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still in any worthy pursuit it is meritorious." - Samuel Smiles

"Trust: Just as you would not want to do business with someone you can't trust, this law simply stated is: When you can completely trust the process of the universe and life, you will be supplied abundantly and you will be able to make your life work just the way you want it. And the trust you give and have must be 100% or it is zero. It cannot be given under one condition and not under another. There are many things we trust with our lives and have no concern about. Such as: the sun will come up every day; the law of gravity works all the time; the pilot who pilots the plane we fly on, is competent; our garbage is picked up on certain days. If we could not trust the things we take for granted will occur without any effort on our part, the fear for our well-being would be so great we would not be able to enjoy our lives. Can you imagine what the world would be like, if we could not trust the food we buy, the water we drink or that the people we depend on would not manipulate or harm us? But the only way we can expect others to trust us is, we need to be trustworthy ourselves, and especially to ourselves. Unfortunately, many people don't trust themselves and the judgments and decisions they make. Therefore, they experience disharmony with their lives and their world." - Sidney Madwed

"A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows." - Sydney J. Harris

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Envy is irrational. When you are burning with envy, the person you are envious of is not affected. If he has a knowledge, he remains knowledgeable. If he has wealth, he remains wealthy. The envious person just destroys himself. The more he complains about someone’s good fortune, the more he harms himself." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"One’s shoes may look pretty to outsiders, but the person wearing them feels only the pain of those shoes hurting his feet." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"The person who desires more physical pleasures will frequently feel frustrated since he always desires more than he can obtain. On the other hand, the person who desires to do good deeds is easily able to find good deeds to engage in." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"Who is a wise man? He who learns from every man. As is stated (Psalms 119:99): "From all my teachers I have grown wise"" - Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

"To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny." - Simone Weil

"In Plato, art is mystification because there is the heaven of Ideas; but in the earthly domain all glorification of the earth is true as soon as it is realized. Let men attach value to words, forms, colors, mathematical theorems, physical laws, and athletic prowess; let them accord value to one another in love and friendship, and the objects, the events, and the men immediately have this value; they have it absolutely. It is possible that a man may refuse to love anything on earth; he will prove this refusal and he will carry it out by suicide. If he lives, the reason is that, whatever he may say, there still remains in him some attachment to existence; his life will be commensurate with this attachment; it will justify itself to the extent that it genuinely justifies the world. This justification, though open upon the entire universe through time and space, will always be finite. Whatever one may do, one never realizes anything but a limited work, like existence itself which tries to establish itself through that work and which death also limits. It is the assertion of our finiteness which doubtless gives the doctrine which we have just evoked its austerity and, in some eyes, its sadness. As soon as one considers a system abstractly and theoretically, one puts himself, in effect, on the plane of the universal, thus, of the infinite. ...existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men. Taking on its own account Descartes’ revolt against the evil genius, the pride of the thinking reed in the face of the universe which crushes him, it asserts that, despite his limits, through them, it is up to each one to fulfill his existence as an absolute. Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive. There is a very old saying which goes: “Do what you must, come what may.” That amounts to saying in a different way that the result is not external to the good will which fulfills itself in aiming at it. If it came to be that each man did what he must, existence would be saved in each one without there being any need of dreaming of a paradise where all would be reconciled in death." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside --from others. We do not accept it willingly." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"A fine horse or a beautiful woman, I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"It is a question of cubic capacity, said he; a man with so large a brain must have something in it." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"There may be someone who, as a result of not hearing or of not believing, is ignorant of the one Nature, highest of all existing things, alone sufficient unto itself in its eternal beatitude, through its own omnipotent goodness granting and causing all other things to be something and in some respect to fare well. And he may also be ignorant of the many other things which we necessarily believe about God and His creatures. If so, then I think that in great part he can persuade himself of these matters merely by reason alone— if he is of even average intelligence. Although he can do this in many ways, I shall propose one [way] which I regard as the most accessible for him." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

"How I thirst for Heaven-that blessed habitation where our love for Jesus will have no limit! But to get there we must suffer... we must weep... Well, I wish to suffer all that shall please my Beloved, I wish to let Him do just as He wills with His "little ball."" - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder—and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe—a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Eve bites into the fruit. Suddenly she realizes that she is naked. She begins to cry. The kindly serpent picks up a handkerchief, gives it to her. "It's all right," he says. "The first moment is always the hardest." "But I thought knowledge would be so wonderful," Eve says, sniffling. "Knowledge?!" laughs the serpent. "This fruit is from the Tree of Life."" - Stephen Mitchell

"What may appear to be proud ungrateful and headstrong from the outside may from the inside express an unshakable integrity of character. Pride, if it doesn't step over the line into arrogance, is simply an unprejudiced self-esteem. Ingratitude is the appropriate response to a kindness that has hooks on it. Headstrong is another word for trusting your own heart." - Stephen Mitchell

"Regarding the song Sunday from Sunday in the Park with George: Studying the painting, I realized that these people don’t know… they’re going to be immortal… and when I wrote the word forever… I cried." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

"He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman's sensuality, and explores it, without discriminating between his friend's wife and the parlor-maid who opens the door to him. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. They are constantly on the alert, always ready and willing to follow the trail of an adventure to the very edge of the abyss. They are full of passion all the time, but it is the passion of a gambler rather than a lover, cold, calculating and dangerous. Some are so persistent that their whole lives, long after their youth is spent, are made an eternal adventure by this expectation. Each of their days is resolved into hundreds of small sensual experiences - a look exchanged in passing, a fleeting smile, knees brushing together as a couple sit opposite each other - and the year, in its own turn, dissolves into hundreds of such days in which sensuous experience is the constantly flowing, nourishing, inspiring source of life." - Stefan Zweig

"Love is an attempt to change a piece of the dream-world into reality." - Theodor Reik

"There is a latent fear among women appreciate men as a female as an individual. They fear that desires not as a particular woman, but as a female closest to its disposal." - Theodor Reik

"He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"Throughout our history the success of the homemaker has been but another name for the up-building of the nation." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-colored foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo

"Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"It will require more than a few hours of fasting and prayer to cast out such demons as selfishness, worldliness, and unbelief. Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and of conduct." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

"In private prayer we have a far greater advantage as so the exercise of our own gifts and graces and parts that we have in public...in public duties we are more passive, but in private duties we are more active. Now, the more our gifts and parts and graces are exercised, the more they are strengthened and increased. All acts strengthen habits. The more sin is acted, the more it is strengthened. And so it is with our gifts and graces; the more they are acted, the more they are strengthened." - Thomas Brooks