Great Throughts Treasury

"What a wonderful vision, which makes us contemplate the human race in the unity of its origin in God in the unity of its nature, composed equally in all men of a material body and a spiritual soul; in the unity of its immediate end and its mission in the world; in the unity of its dwelling, the earth, whose benefits all men, by right of nature, may use to sustain and develop life; in the unity of the redemption." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL

"Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us." - Albert Einstein

"It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped. " - Albert Einstein

"Often in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking." - Albert Einstein

"The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves" - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

"The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'" - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West

"It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth." - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West

"The human race cannot go forward without liberty. If this be correct, then all people everywhere should strive for liberty. If they achieve liberty, they will get a chance to pursue happiness and perhaps will be able to develop toward the ultimate goal of creation." - Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places." - Robert Frost

"They can't scare me with their empty spaces between stars -on stars where no human race is I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places." - Robert Frost

"He is very sorry that such undesirable things are every now and then cropping up in … and discouraging you in your work, keeping you from devoting all your spare time in teaching the Cause, and spreading its principles. He does not wish you, however, to lose heart from such things. As the Cause grows its difficulties will increase and its problems will become more numerous. The friends, especially the older ones, should therefore try and stand unmoved by them. In fact the more their difficulties will increase the more they have to take courage and try to solve them. The Master has often said that sorrows are like furrows, the deeper they go the more productive the land becomes. If this problem. .. should be settled other problems will arise. Are the friends to become discouraged or are they to follow the footsteps of the Master and consider them more as chances to show their tenacity of belief and spirit of sacrifice?" - Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání

"Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered: Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of s gigantic hound!" - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Secular or Civil authority is instituted by men; it is in the people unless they bestow it on a Prince. This Power is immediately in the Multitude, as in the subject of it; for this Power is in the Divine Law, but the Divine Law hath given this power to no particular man. If the Positive Law be taken away, there is left no Reason amongst the Multitude (who are Equal) one rather than another should bear the Rule over the Rest. Power is given to the multitude to one man, or to more, by the same Law of Nature; for the Commonwealth cannot exercise this Power, therefore it is bound to bestow it upon some One man or some Few. It depends upon the Consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a King or other Magistrates, and if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy or Democracy." - Robert Bellarmine, fully Saint Robert Bellarmine

"Morality has need, that it may be well received, of the mask of fable and the charm of poetry: truth pleases less when it is naked; and it is the only virgin whom we best like to see a little clothed." - Stanislas de Boufflers, fully Marquis Stanislas-Jean de Boufflers, Chevalier de Boufflers

"In his eyes shone the reflection of the most beautiful planet in the Universe---a planet that is not too hot and not too cold; that has liquid water on the surface and where the gravity is just right for human beings and the atmosphere is perfect for them to breathe; where there are mountains and deserts and oceans and islands and forests and trees and birds and plants and animals and insects and people---lots and lots of people. Where there is life. Some of it, possibly, intelligent." - Stephen Hawking

"It would be hypocritical to complain. I can generally ignore it by going off to think in 11 dimensions. [On his lack of privacy]" - Stephen Hawking

"The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car." - Stephen Hawking

"We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics." - Stephen Hawking

"Coming up home the other night in my car (the Guy Street car), I heard a man who was hanging onto a strap say: “The drama is just turning into a bunch of talk.” This set me thinking; and I was glad that it did, because I am being paid by this paper to think once a week, and it is wearing. Some days I never think from morning till night." - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"A man must needs smarte whan irous thoughtes occupy his hearte. [irate]" - Thomas Hood

"The new hero-type favored by Aschenbach, and recurring in his books in a multiplicity of individual variants, had already been remarked upon at an early stage by a shrewd commentator, who had described his conception as that of an intellectual and boyish manly virtue, that of a youth who clenches his teeth in proud shame and stands calmly on as the swords and spears pass through his body ... the figure of Saint Sebastian is the most perfect symbol if not of art in general, then certainly of the kind of art in question." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns." - Thomas Merton

"It is sometimes discouraging to see how small the peace movement is, and especially here in America where it is most necessary. But we have to remember that this is the usual pattern, and the Bible has led us to expect it. Spiritual work is done with disproportionately small and feeble instruments.. And now above all when everything is so utterly complex, and when people collapse under the burden of confusions and cease to think at all, it is natural that few may want to take on the burden of trying to effect something in the moral and spiritual way, in political action. Yet this is precisely what has to be done." - Thomas Merton

"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all. They can only conceive one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men. They do not know that reality is to be sought not in division but in unity, for we are ‘members one of another.’" - Thomas Merton

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." - Thomas Merton

"Sunrise: hidden by pines and cedars to the east, I saw the red flame of the kingly sun glaring through the black trees, not like dawn but like a forest fire. Then the sun became distinguished as a person, and he shone silently and with solemn power through the branches, and the whole world was silent and calm." - Thomas Merton

"The sense of liberation from illusory difference" - Thomas Merton

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall." - Thomas Paine

"You smile with pomp and rigor, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue and get murdered time after time." - William Blake

"The paleontological evidence before us today clearly demonstrates ordered progressive change with the successive development of new faunal and floral assemblages through the changing epochs of our earth's history. There should be no real conflict between science, which is the search for truth. It is only when scientists remove God from creation that the Christian is faced with an irreconcilable situation." - Wendell Phillips

"I came to consider the instinct as nothing more than the motor aspect of pleasure." - Wilhelm Reich

"We do not need to plan or devise a world of the future; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid futurology available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at the future of the human race; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children." - Wendell Berry

"Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores" - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil’s Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon - and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"I've been on a 46-year diet of olives and alcohol. The latter I consume. The former I save and use over again in more alcohol. In my lifetime, I imagine, I have consumed at least $200,000 worth of whisky." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

"The commonest complaint from the abler pupils is that if they finish a set of exercises ahead of the rest of the class they are simply given more of the same kind, which they find very boring." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"In the dimension of dhyan (meditation) you have let the activities of the mind come to an end" - Vimala Thakar

"Those of us who have dedicated our lives to social action have considered our personal morality and ethics, our motives and habits, to be private territory. We not only want our personal motivations and habits cut off from public view, but from our own recognition as well. But in truth, the inner life is not a private or personal thing; it’s very much a social issue. The mind is a result of collective human effort. There is not your mind and my mind; it’s a human mind. It’s a collective human mind, organized and standardized through centuries. The values, the norms, the criteria are patterns of behavior organized by collective groups. There is nothing personal or private about them. We may close the doors to our rooms and feel that nobody knows our thoughts, but what we do in so-called privacy affects the life around us. If we spend our days victimized by negative energies and negative thoughts, if we yield to depression, melancholia, and bitterness, these energies pollute the atmosphere. Where then is privacy? We need to learn, as a social responsibility, to look at the mind as something that has been created collectively and to recognize that our individual expressions are expressions of the human mind." - Vimala Thakar

"The proper stuff of fiction does not exist everything is the proper stuff of fiction every feeling every thought every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her as well as honor and love her for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?" - Victor Hugo

"For he knew how to do a little of everything--all badly." - Victor Hugo

"Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine; it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress." - Victor Hugo

"The cause of all this young man’s crimes was his desire to be well dressed. The first grisette who had said to him, you are handsome, had spattered a stain of darkness into his heart and had made a Cain of this Abel." - Victor Hugo

"The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul." - Václav Havel

"This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique ... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard." - Václav Havel

"The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected." - Vannevar Bush

"And when there is no wind a beast draws along a huge cart, which is a grand sight." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella