Great Throughts Treasury

"Sometimes... Come on, how often exactly, Bert? Can you recall four, five, more such occasions? Or would no human heart have survived two or three? Sometimes (I have nothing to say in reply to your question), while Lolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil, lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shed all my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all my masculine pride - and literally crawl on my knees to your chair, my Lolita! You would give me one look - a gray furry question mark of a look: Oh no, not again (incredulity, exasperation); for you never deigned to believe that I could, without any specific designs, ever crave to bury my face in your plaid skirt, my darling! The fragility of those bare arms of yours - how I longed to enfold them, all your four limpid lovely limbs, a folded colt, and take your head between my unworthy hands, and pull the temple-skin back on both sides, and kiss your Chinesed eyes, and - Please, leave me alone, will you, you would say, for Christ's sake leave me alone. And I would get up from the floor while you looked on, your face deliberately twitching in imitation of my tic nerveux. But never mind, never mind, I am only a brute, never mind, let us go on with my miserable story." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids?" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Better a devil you know than an angel you know it!" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"We will discover that there are systems and structures that inevitably lead to aggression, exploitation, and war. We have accepted aggression as a way of living. We create and entrench ourselves in structures which culminate in wars. Retaining the structures and avoiding wars is not possible. You and I as individuals have to realize how we are responsible, how we cooperate with the systems and thereby participate in the violence and wars. And then we must begin to inquire whether we can discontinue cooperating with the systems, whether we can stop participating in wars, and explore alternative ways of living for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar

"A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Politics is the executive expression of human immaturity." - Vera Mary Brittain

"Trust not the horse, O Trojans. Be it what it may, I fear the Grecians even when they offer gifts." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"A rescuing idea is one that disagrees with your habitual nature but which agrees with Truth." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"I need not care about anything I need not care about." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Neurosis consciously met will eventually weaken and fall away." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Try to see what attitudes rule your day, then ask what kind of a day you usually have." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers." - Vicki Robin

"Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

"Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice." - Victor Cousin

"In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continually." - Victor Hugo

"To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against. To be 'ultra' is to go to the extreme. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne and the mitre in the name of the altar; to abuse the cause one supports; to rush one's fences, outdo the executioner in the grilling of heretics, charge the idol with insufficient idolatry, insult by excessive adulation, find the pope insufficiently papist and the king insufficiently royalist. It is to denigrate the whiteness of alabaster or snow or the swan or the lily in the name of flawless whiteness; to be a partisan of causes to the point of becoming their enemy; to be so vehemently for as to be in fact against." - Victor Hugo

"When liberty returns, I will return." - Victor Hugo

"By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic the self-transcendence of human existence. It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life — an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man... What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"One should constantly strive to acquire knowledge and by doing so one shall be praised and respected amongst by scholars." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"A woman should perform the duties of a wife without any complain, give birth to good children and bring them up as ideal citizens." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"About thee (my husband) I have placed the overpowering (plant), upon thee placed the very overpowering one. May thy mind run after me as a calf after the cow, as water along its course." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"For the body to perform to the optimum level it is necessary that all the doors work perfectly." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"If your wish is fulfilled, you revere Me; if it is not, you revile Me. That is how Desire debases you." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"It is urgent that everyone should inquire into the true, the pure and the permanent; for there is at present a delusion about values. Even the leaders of people are hugging the false hypothesis that happiness can be had by means of wealth or health, housing or clothing, or the cultivation of skills in handicraft and manufacture." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"We have all around us, in the atmosphere, the music emanating from all the Broadcasting Stations of the World, but they do not assail your ear at any time. You are not aware of any Station; but, if you have a receiver and if you tune it to the correct wavelength, you can hear the matter broadcast from any Station; if you fail to tune it correctly, you will get instead of news only nuisance." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whatever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it. The same thing is not true of Germany, and until it was made true in Germany, there could be no free political democracy anywhere else in the world — to say nothing of any free social democracy. My revolutionary friends who will not recognize this fact seem to me like a bunch of musicians sitting down to play a symphony concert in a forest where there is a man-eating tiger loose. For my part, much as I enjoy symphony concerts, I want to put my fiddle away in its case and get a rifle and go out and settle with the tiger." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"My only school was life itself." - Václav Havel

"The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being." - Václav Havel

"To be under the control of another is to be condemned; it is the worst thing that can befall a person. Love and affection is possible only when a person is being seen and is not out of sight in a faraway place." - Valmiki NULL

"Plenty of church members are shaky about what they believe, while not many are shaken by what they believe." - Vance Havner

"It has been said that science is opposed to, and in conflict with revelation. But the history of the former shows that the greater its progress, and the more accurate its investigations and results, the more plainly it is seen not only not to clash with the latter, but in all things to confirm it. The very sciences from which objections have been brought against religion have, by their own progress, removed those objections, and in the end furnished full confirmation of the inspired Word of God." - Tryon Edwards

"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

"Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures." - Thucydides NULL

"Okay, we have just passed through the Michener zone, and , assuming that narcolepsy hasn’t leadened our lids, that we’ve not been Lao-this’d and Lao-that’ed into a comatose state, we’re now in a position, as we rejoin the narrative flow, to conclude that Fan Nan Nan was a Lao Theung community. Are we not?" - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"And he that doth the ravens feed, yea, providently caters for the sparrow, be comfort to my age! As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 3." - William Shakespeare

"Believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe. Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"BENEDICK: I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. BEATRICE: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. Much Ado about Nothing, Act I, Scene 6" - William Shakespeare

"Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so." - William Shakespeare

"But her's, which through the crystal tears gave light, shone like the moon in water seen by night." - William Shakespeare