Great Throughts Treasury

"For rhythm and harmony penetrate deeply into the mind and have a most powerful effect on it, and if education is good, bring balance and fairness, if it is bad, the reverse. " - Plato NULL

"He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself. [On the virtuous man]" - Plato NULL

"I would be better for me… that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself." - Plato NULL

"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar." - Plato NULL

"O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. " - Plato NULL

"The good are like one another and friends to one another; and... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing." - Plato NULL

"For, by your research, your unveiling of the secrets of nature, and your teaching of men to direct the forces of nature toward their own welfare, you preach at the same time, in the language of figures, formulae and discoveries, the inexpressible harmony of the work of an all-wise God. In fact, according to the measure of its progress, and contrary to affirmations advanced in the past, true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree-as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science. We would even say that from this progressive discovery of God, which is realized in the increase of knowledge, there flow benefits not only for the scientist himself when he reflects as a philosopher-and how can he escape such reflection?-but also for those who share in these new discoveries or make them the object of their own considerations. Genuine philosophers profit from these discoveries in a very special way, because when they take these scientific conquests as the basis for their rational speculations, their conclusions thereby acquire greater certainty, while they are provided with clearer illustrations in the midst of possible shadows and more convincing assistance in establishing an ever more satisfying response to difficulties and objections." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL

"This [the opening of the Vatican City radio station built by Marconi earlier in 1931] was a new demonstration of the harmony between science and religion that each fresh conquest of science ever more luminously confirms, so that one may say that those who speak of the incompatibility of science and religion either make science say that which it never said or make religion say that which it never taught." -

"Posidonius was dissatisfied with the traditional view that made the individual soul the simple mirror of the World-Soul, because he saw in the effort to follow the superior daimon the possibility of participating in its activity. For Posidonius, the wise man, and even the individual who is making moral progress, shares with the World-Soul the task of continuously creating and sustaining kosmos. The happy human being does not merely live in harmony with Nature; he is one of the creators of Nature. Thus Posidonius gave a fresh and powerful dimension to Stoic ethics. [paraphrased]" - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL

"The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfill the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

"Some of the most effective approaches to promoting affirmative living are those that involve the entire village. An annual event in Boston called Team Harmony brings middle and high school students together with local sports figures and business leaders to take a stand against prejudice and bigotry. After the Team Harmony event in 1994, many students wrote about the positive messages they received. Since the event, I want to do all that I can to stop racism, one of them wrote. I want everyone to live in peace and harmony, where there is no hatred and no violence." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings. " - Albert Einstein

"In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. " - Albert Einstein

"Each celestial body, in fact each and every atom, produces a particular sound on account of its movement, its rhythm or vibration. All these sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony in which each element, while having its own function and character, contributes to the whole." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

"The longing to behold this pre-established harmony [of phenomena and theoretical principles] is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself... The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart." - Albert Einstein

"The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages." - Albert Einstein

"Through the harmony that is present in the substance of the soul by nature,..the soul is lasting and incorruptible." - Ramon Llul, aka Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull, Raimundus, Raymundus Lullus or Lullius

"And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"When they gather together as a single unit, and there is harmony among them--- then He is their king, but not when there is dissention among them." - Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL

"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

"All over the ancient world populations were now set against populations, as men were set against women and against other men. Wandering over the width and breadth of this disintegrating world, masses of refugees were everywhere fleeing their homelands, desperately searching for a haven, for a safe place to go. But there was no such place left in their new world. For this was now a world where, having violently deprived the Goddess and the female half of humanity of all power, gods and men of war ruled. It was a world in which the Blade, and not the Chalice, would henceforth be supreme, a world in which peace and harmony would be found only in the myths and legends of a long lost past." - Riane Eisler, fully Riane Tennenhaus Eisler

"in accidents blindness chance conviction cosmology day death despair doubt feeling force harmony heart intelligence listening music Peace purpose reason Silence universe" - Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.

"Affinity, affinity. All beings are made up by affinity. The whole universe, through every dimension, forms a vast net of affinity that is all of a piece--a multi-dimensional web. With any movement within the web, everything moves. Each gesture, each blink brings a new kind of equilibrium and new kinds of interplay throughout the net. This is a never-ending process from the unknown past to the unknown future, and through all other dimensions including the eternal present. Touches that bring joy and harmony bring new interplay and new equilibrium. Touches that cause suffering and death bring new interplay and new equilibrium as well." - Robert Aitken, fully Robert Baker Aitken

"I resonate so much with the Garrison Institute approach. Your board member Rabbi Rachel Cowan and I also work with Jewish social justice activists, collaborating with Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSF). JFSF is active in several areas, community organizing especially. Many activists have wonderful intentions and are so passionate. They often tend not to take good care of themselves. Anger can be self-consuming. We believe that helping them take better care of themselves, to work with their own passion and anger and to have greater self-awareness will contribute to their good work. By giving them skills and helping them deepen awareness, we are inviting them to cultivate spiritual practice, even if they are not “religious” people." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg

"It unequivocally maintains the principle of equal rights, opportunities, and privileges for men and women, insists on compulsory education, eliminates extremes of poverty and wealth, abolishes the institution of priesthood, prohibits slavery, asceticism, mendicancy, and monasticism, prescribes monogamy, discourages divorce, emphasizes the necessity of strict obedience to one's government, exalts any work performed in the spirit of service to the level of worship, urges either the creation or the selection of a auxiliary international language, and delineates the outlines of those institutions that must establish and perpetuate the general peace of mankind." - Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání

"Let friend and foe alike know that America has the muscle to back up its words." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, engaged all the time in finding us. Every pulse of love is a tendril that draws us in His direction. Every verification of truth links the finite mind up into a Foundational Mind that undergirds us. Every deed of good will points toward a consummate Goodness which fulfills all our tiny adventures in faith. We can find Him because in Him we live and move and have our being." - Rufus Jones, fully Rufus Matthew Jones

"The Prophet said: 'Women and the wise win hearts full income to their owners. Cahillerse woman is superior, because they act tough and rebellious. ' Subtlety, grace and mercy they are rare, because the natures of the animals' Almighty. Love and kindness characteristic of humanity. Anger and lust, characteristic of animality. He is the light of the grace of Allah, is not dear. O, it is creative, not created." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite." - Russell Kirk

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me." - Saint Paul, aka The Apostle Paul, Paul the Apostle or Saul of Tarsus NULL

"Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"Through every mortal sin which is contrary to God’s commandments, an obstacle is placed to the outpouring of charity, since from the very fact that a man chooses to prefer sin to God’s friendship, which requires that we should follow His will, it follows that the habit of charity is lost at once through one mortal sin." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"Let us allow God to act; He brings things to completion when we least expect it." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"We forget that by hurrying to impose the yoke of the materialistic, or, as we like to put it euphemistically, the practical aims of life upon the dawn and springtime of childhood and early youth, we only deprive our children prematurely of the bloom of flowering youth and nip our children's spiritual yearnings in the bud. Instead of encouraging our children to get wisdom for its own sake, we raise them to become only clever and shrewd, judging everything in the light of self-interest and respecting only those intellectual and spiritual pursuits that are likely to yield the highest dividends in terms of material gain. A generation raised on such a philosophy of life will never be able to experience that true joy of learning, which regards knowledge itself as the supreme reward." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"It is agreed that all sound which is the material of music is of three sorts. First is harmonica, which consists of vocal music; second is organica, which is formed from the breath; third is rhythmica, which receives its numbers from the beat of the fingers. For sound is produced either by the voice, coming through the throat; or by the breath, coming through the trumpet or tibia, for example; or by touch, as in the case of the cithara or anything else that gives a tuneful sound on being struck." - Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL

"is a way of becoming so familiar with yourself — with your thoughts, sensations, feelings, behavior patterns, and attitudes — that you get to know yourself more intimately than you ever thought possible. Some teachers describe meditation as the process of making friends with yourself. Instead of turning your attention outward, to other people or the external world, you turn it inward, back on yourself." - Stephan Bodian

"The soul should know whither it is going and whence it came, what is good for it and what is evil, what it seeks and what it avoids, and what is that Reason which distinguishes between the desirable and the undesirable, and thereby tames the madness of our desires and calms the violence of our fears. [Seneca]" - Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL

"At the bottom there is no perfect history; there is none such conceivable. All past centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet." - Thomas Carlyle

"Ever as before does madness remain, terrific, altogether infernal, boiling up of the nether chaotic deep, through this fair painted vision of creation, which swims thereon, and which we name the real." - Thomas Carlyle

"The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love." - Thomas Carlyle

"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against one other." - Thomas Carlyle

"The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year." - Thomas Dreier

"A sunny temper gilds the edges of life's blackest cloud." - Thomas Guthrie

"A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods." - Thomas Jefferson

"Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively." - Thomas Jefferson

"Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language." - Thomas Jefferson

"With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our assembly [the Virginia Legislature] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin [Great Britain], will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered." - Thomas Jefferson

"There was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Unlike Christian-Jewish dialogue, whose sour grapes have set our teeth on edge, Jewish-Muslim dialogue will be fruitful. Certainly it will serve notice on the Arabs that their Jewish “cousins” have broken out of their Western provincialism. If henceforth Jews will assign to Jewish-Muslim dialogue the importance that is its due, the Arabs, in whose nationalism religion is as important as it is in Jewish nationalism, will eventually – and perhaps sooner than cold-headed realists will dare expect – rediscover that the Jews are their brothers, descendants of Abraham’s second son. " - Trude Weiss-Rosmarin