Great Throughts Treasury

"Nevertheless, when one is ill, one should be submissive to the doctor and obey him." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"There are good, God-fearing persons who still fall into certain faults, and it is better to bear with them than to be hard on them." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything — without refutation — without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening." - Thomas Merton

"Mad Song - The wild winds weep, And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs unfold: But lo! the morning peeps 5 Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling beds of dawn The earth do scorn. Lo! to the vault Of pavèd heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven: They strike the ear of night, Make weep the eyes of day; They make mad the roaring winds, And with tempests play. Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain." - William Blake

"Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce, And dost not know the garment from the man; Every harlot was a virgin once, Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan. Tho’ thou art worship’d by the names divine Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still The Son of Morn in weary Night’s decline, The lost traveller’s dream under the hill." - William Blake

"And what else is the cause of all transgression, but that man's ignorant pride will have his will preferred to the will of God." - William Cowper

"Rooted in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing everywhere a common human blood, we declare again that all men are brothers, and that mutual tolerance is the price of liberty." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"Resignation - Why, why repine, my pensive friend, at pleasures slipp'd away? Some the stern Fates will never lend, and all refuse to stay. I see the rainbow in the sky, the dew upon the grass; I see them, and I ask not why they glimmer or they pass. With folded arms I linger not to call them back; 'twere vain: in this, or in some other spot, I know they'll shine again." - Walter Savage Landor

"The truth about Kolchak (and his double, Denikin) has now been revealed in full. The shooting of tens of thousands of workers. The shooting even of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The flogging of peasants of entire districts. The public flogging of women. The absolutely unbridled power of the officers, the sons of landowners. Endless looting. Such is the truth about Kolchak and Denikin." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!" - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"So she sat down to morning tea, like any other old lady with a high nose, thin cheeks, a ring on her finger and the usual trappings of rather shabby but gallant old age." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"And whatever he did, he always fell back onto this paradox at the core of his thought. To remain in paradise and become a demon! To re-enter hell and become an angel!" - Victor Hugo

"Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"Because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"I think, therefore, that we ought to take great numbers of hoplites, both from Athens and from our allies, and not merely from our subjects, but also any we may be able to get for love or money in the Peloponnesus, and great numbers also of archers and slingers, to oppose the Sicilian horse." - Thucydides NULL

"But cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves, when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear, but float upon a wild and violent sea each way and move. Macbeth, Act iv, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"Let us suppose a man to be engaged in the progressive voluptuousness of the most sensual scene. Here, if ever, we may expect sensation to be triumphant. Passion is in this case in its full career. He impatiently shuts out every consideration that may disturb his enjoyment; moral views and dissuasives can no longer obtrude themselves into his mind; he resigns himself, without power of resistance, to his predominant idea. Alas, in this situation, nothing is so easy as to extinguish his sensuality! Tell him at this moment that his father is dead, that he has lost or gained a considerable sum of money, or even that his favorite horse is stolen from the meadow, and his whole passion shall be instantly annihilated: so vast is the power which a mere proposition possesses over the mind of man. So conscious are we of the precariousness of the fascination of the senses that upon such occasions we provide against the slightest interruption. If our little finger ached, we might probably immediately bid adieu to the empire of this supposed almighty power. It is said to be an experiment successfully made by sailors and persons in that class of society, to lay a wager with their comrades that the sexual intercourse shall not take place between them and their bedfellow the ensuing night, and to trust to their veracity for a confession of the event. The only means probably by which any man ever succeeds in indulging the pleasures of sense, in contradiction to the habitual persuasion of his judgment, is by contriving to forget everything that can be offered against them. If, notwithstanding all his endeavors, the unwished for idea intrudes, the indulgence instantly becomes impossible. Is it to be supposed that the power of sensual allurement, which must be carefully kept alive, and which the slightest accident overthrows, can be invincible only to the artillery of reason, and that the most irresistible considerations of justice, interest and happiness will never be able habitually to control it?" - William Godwin

"Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and forms of living and praying. But this kind of praying, which takes all its thoughts and words only from the state of our hearts, makes it impossible for us to be strangers to ourselves. The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there." - William Law

"Too great refinement is false delicacy, and true delicacy is solid refinement." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.’" - Dorothy Parker

"Anger is often more hurtful than the injury that caused it." - English Proverbs

"Make hay while the sun shines." - English Proverbs

"Enjoy yourself, drink, call the life you live today your own-but only that; the rest belongs to chance." - Euripedes NULL