Great Throughts Treasury

"Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err." - William James

"We keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can." - William James

"Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The human race is the seminary of heaven, will appear from a subsequent article, in which it will be shown, that Heaven and Hell are from the human race, and that therefore the human race is the seminary of heaven." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"There is a place for analysis, but it is apt to be quite fatal in prayer and meditation. Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Do not dissect divine intelligence, but realize it. Do not wonder how God can possibly solve this problem, but just watch Him do it in His own way—and He will if you will give Him a chance. You know that God is Love. So go ahead on that, and do not get theoretical about it." - Emmet Fox

"The intellect is a cold thing and a merely intellectual idea will never stimulate thought in the same manner that a spiritual idea does." - Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

"I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds." - Felix Adler

"It is the moral element contained in it that alone gives value and dignity to a religion, and only in so far as its teachings serve to stimulate and purify our moral aspirations does it deserve to retain its ascendency over mankind." - Felix Adler

"Who troubles others has no rest himself." - Italian Proverbs