Great Throughts Treasury

"Our consciousness of the world is biased. We see not with out eyes, but with our brains. What a piece of bread looks like, depends on how hungry we are." - Lyall Watson

"Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune." - E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies." -

"Those eyes, soft and capricious as a cloudless sky, whose azure depth their color emulates, must needs be conversant with upward looks - prayer’s voiceless service." - William Wordsworth

"Transactional leaders approach followers with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or subsidies for campaign contributions… The transforming leader looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower. The result of transforming leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents." - James MacGregor Burns

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable but not quite. Life is not an illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron

"In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful." - Paul Davies

"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens." - Lewis L. Dunnington

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison

"The bare fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and cannot admit compromise or limitations that scientific research looks on the whole field of human activity as its own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards any other power that seeks to usurp any part of its province." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"God is the source and goal of ideals by which to live triumphantly in the face of starkest grief. The sufferer who finds God as the strength and mainstay of his life does not merely acquiesce before the inevitable with stoic fortitude. He looks the tragedy in the face, and looks up to new heights of spiritual beauty to which he may mount by using his grief as a stairway to God’s glory." - Georgia Harkness

"What looks absurd within the limits of time may be luminous within the scope of eternity." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Prayer is a way of increasing our sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of life. From this point of view, it is very much like exercise. A man’s muscles become responsive by training... The soul is stretched and enlarged by prayer just as the body is stretched and enlarged by physical exercise... Prayer is a way of aspiration. It is a way of lifting ourselves, of getting a higher look, of transcending self. For when a man looks at life only from inside himself, or only from within the walls of his home, or profession, seeing the world as though it were all in terms of his special interests, then he is “too full of himself to have any room for God.” But in prayer, he... relates his own little life and his own little needs and life of humanity. He lifts himself up by prayer, and achieves a high spiritual stature." - Robert I. Kahn

"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different." -

"Having given up God so as to be self-sufficient, man has lost track of his soul. He looks in vain for himself; he turns the universe upside down trying to find himself, he finds masks, and behind the masks, death." - Jacques Maritain

"On close scrutiny, the beast within us looks suspiciously like a sheep." - Sarah J. McCarthy

"God does not look at your ledger figures or your wealth; he looks at your deeds." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"It is uncertain where death looks for us; let us expect her everywhere: the premeditation of death is a forethinking of liberty." -

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process they do not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Of ceremonies you should know that they are superfluous; for if we are to receive something from God, He looks into our hearts and not at the ceremonies. If we have received something of Him, He does not wish us to use it for ceremonies but works." - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." - Francis Parkman

"A mean searching for God ceases to look to the beyond, asking “Why?” and, only saying “Because God is,” looks to the Present and finds peace." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"Vision looks inward and becomes duty. Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upward and becomes faith." -

"Good art is not what it looks like but what it does to us." - Ray Adzak

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you'll learn at how precious it is." - Maxim Gorky, pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart... Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." -

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." -

"The secular or freethinking humanist looks into the self for guidance; response to need comes from deep human feelings of compassion, concern for others, and a desire to help. The freethinker is not motivated by a divine command to act, but rather by personal humanistic response to pain, loneliness, hunger, and homelessness. Benevolent actions are not accompanied by a need to convert or indoctrinate, but rather flow from deep human wellsprings of empathy and a desire to improve the condition of the world." - Gerald Alexander Larue

"The man who has been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Why is it that , in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no one really knows what he looks like?" - Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and considers his past and the future." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings... The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth- even more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; though its merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-trained wisdom of ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds man back - fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear least they themselves prove less worthy to the respect they have supposed themselves to be." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"The wise man, before beginning an action, looks carefully to the end." - Bhartrihari NULL

"When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant." - Blaise Pascal

"Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by a defeat." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may lower another by defeat." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Artful speech and insinuating looks rarely accompany true virtue." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in fame, unlimited in space, and infinite in duration. In the performance of its sacred offices, it fears no danger, spares no expense, looks in the volcano, dives into the ocean, perforates the earth, wings its flight into the skies, explores sea and land, contemplates the distant, examines the minute, comprehends the great, ascends to the sublime - no place too remote for its grasp, no height too exalted for its reach." - DeWitt Clinton

"With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep all yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, woo it, and teach it to obey your will and wish. Since time began today has been the friend of man; but in his blindness and his sorrow, he looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, and the great pregnant hour of time, with God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say - attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Looks are one thing and facts another." - English Proverbs

"That is not virtue which looks for a reward." - Felix Adler

"Th' past always looks betther thin it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here." - Finley Peter Dunne

"It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned." - Frank A. Clark

"To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions. To know a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. To first for a reason and in a calculating spirit is something your true warrior despises." - George Santayana