Great Throughts Treasury

"One wise man is better than forty fools; one moon sheds more light than myriads of stars." - Hitopadesha NULL

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come: it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life." -

"The higher stages of the mystical life are very ordinary. There is no ecstasy, no rapture, no flash of light, no bells, no incense. I am now my true self." - William Johnston

"As far we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Within each one of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation, to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude, the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"I believe in immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings. I believe that the state we enter after death is wrought of our own motives, thoughts, and deeds... I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

"[Power] waxes in secrecy and wanes in bright light." - Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy

"Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has remind us (Moral Men - Immoral Society), groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The uniqueness of the inner soul, in its own authenticity – this is the highest expression of the seed of divine light, the light planted for the righteous, from which will bud and blossom the fruit of the tree of life." - Abraham Isaac Kook

"Immense hidden powers seem to lurk in the unconscious depths of even the most common man - indeed, of all people without exception. It is these powers, when put under pressure, that are responsible for all great creative efforts. The men who make history are those who - consciously or unconsciously - turn the switch on the inner switchboards of human character. Pour out all your fears and anxieties, malicious joy and greed and hatred, and you will be astonished at the terrific amount of power which is pent up in your unconscious mind. We can release this power and transform it from negative into positive power, only by bringing into the open, into the light of consciousness, and by accepting ourselves as we are, even though the mountains of debts seem to crush us. This is the principle of honesty. And it is clear that it can be applied only if connected with the principle of faith." - Fritz Künkel

"He that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both." - John Locke

"Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself." - Thomas Merton

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it." - James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener

"Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Regard all men as equal, since God’s light is contained in the heart of each." - Guru Nanak

"Religion floods our darkness with a divine light… Religion brings into the focus of attention the two supreme values - God and the human soul." - John A. O’Brien

"The true Church government is to leave the conscience to its full liberty… and to seek unity in the Light and in the Spirit, walking sweetly and harmoniously together in the midst of different practices." -

"Eternity may be properly denominated a God unfolding himself into light, and shining forth, such as he essentially is, namely, as immutable and the same." -

"Truth and morning become light with time." - Ethiopian Proverbs

"Truth is like light: visible in itself, not distinguished by the shadows that it casts. There is something in our souls of God, which corresponds with what is of God outside us, and recognizes it by direct intuition: something in the true soul which corresponds with truth and knows it to be truth." -

"Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"The relation of existence to time is characterized by two polar elements: temporality and uninterruptedness. Existence is evanescent and always faces the prospect of annihilation, of being thrown out of the stream of time, yet it also exhibits some degree of permanence as the continuous duration in time. Without an element of constancy there could be no permanence within temporality and no knowledge of reality, since our categories of reason are “mirrors, in which the things are reflected in the light of their constancy… Things perish within time, while time itself is everlasting… The present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"The lamps are different, but the Light is the same: it comes from beyond. O thou who art the kernel of Existence, the disagreement between Moslem, Zoroastrian and Jew depends on the standpoint." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Freedom and Liberty are not synonyms. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred upon him… Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but on whatsoever soul Freedom may light, the course of that soul is henceforth onward and upward." - James McCune Smith

"Revolution is only true revolution if it is a continuous struggle – not just an external struggle against an enemy, but an inner struggle, fighting and subduing all negative aspects which hinder or do damage to the course of the revolution. In this light, revolution is… a mighty symphony of victory over the enemy and over oneself." - Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo

"This world is by definition the place where God hides Himself. It contains His light, i.e., the knowledge of Him, in a hidden way. And the purpose of life is to discover God; or as the prophet says: “to fill the world with the knowledge of God.”" - Ezriel Tauber

"A man following Christ’s teaching is like a man carrying a lantern before him at the end of a pole. The light is ever before him, and ever impels him to follow it, by continually lighting up fresh ground and attracting him onward." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle." -

"We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good." - John Greenleaf Whittier

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day." - William Wordsworth

"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle." - Robert Alden

"Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility." - Bahai’ Prayer NULL

"When I look at the stars and realize that the light from some of these suns takes a million years to reach my eyes, I realize how tiny and insignificant this earth is, and how microscopic and evanescent are my own little troubles. I will pass on soon; but the sea stretching for a thousand miles in all directions and the stars and the spiral nebulae swarming through illimitable space above, they will continue for millions of years. I marvel that any man looking up at the stars can have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance." -

"To become conscious of what is unconscious and thus to enlarge one's consciousness means to get in touch with reality, and - in this sense - with truth (intellect-ually and affectively). To enlarge consciousness means to wake up, to lift a veil, to leave the cave, to bring light into the darkness. Could this be the same experience Zen Buddhists call "enlightenment?"" -

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." -

"A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle." - James Keller

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln

"To him that waits, all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light." -

"It is better to light the candle than to curse the darkness." - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

"Nietzsche’s approach developed eventually into a program for radically questioning all the foundations of Western thought. We are slaves to convention, he says - we base our whole lives on attitudes and ideas whose premises, if we ever get round to actually examining them, we reject. This makes ours an inauthentic way of living, a dead way of living. We must re-evaluate our values in the light of what we honestly do believe and feel." - J. P. Stern, fully Joseph Peter Maria Stern

"The cruelest insult… which can be offered to the unfortunate, is to appear to make light of their calamities." - Adam Smith

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once and a while, or the light won't come in." - Alan Alda, born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." - Alan Alda, born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once and a while, or the light won't come in." -

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." -

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once and a while, or the light won't come in." -

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." -

"If you want to bring a difficult relationship into the light of love, make up your mind to change your image of who both of you are." - Alan Cohen

"If you want to bring a difficult relationship into the light of love, make up your mind to change your image of who both of you are." -