Great Throughts Treasury

"My objective as Secretary of Labor is to look through the 'glass ceiling' to see who is on the other side, and to serve as a catalyst for change." - Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

"Resolution thus fubbed with the rusty curb of old father antic the law." - William Shakespeare

"SAMPSON: My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee. GREGORY: How! turn thy back and run? SAMPSON: Fear me not. Gregory: No, marry; I fear thee!" - William Shakespeare

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head; and this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. As You Like It (Duke Senior at II, i)" - William Shakespeare

"Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I poured out the torrent of my long-standing discontent and I challenged them to do and dare anything." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"God forgive you, but I never can." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Angelic happiness is in service, from service, and according to service." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Angels from their wisdom go still further. They say that not only every thing good and true is from the Lord, but every thing of life as well." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Charity itself consists in acting justly and faithfully in whatever office, business and employment a person is engaged in." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"It is believed that angels were created at the beginning, and that heaven was formed of them; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, who, becoming rebellions, was cast down with his crew, and that this was the origin of hell." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Man, before he is being regenerated, does not even know that any internal man exists, much less is he acquainted with its nature and quality." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Peace has in it trust in the Lord, that He governs all things, provides all things, and leads to a good end." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The church of the Lord is spread over all the globe, and is thus universal; and all those are in it who have lived in the good of charity in accordance with their religion." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, is because man was last created, and that which is last created is the basis of all that precedes." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The Lord, from His Divine love by His Divine wisdom, provides the means by which people can be saved; and these means are present with every person born into the world." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment." - Emma Goldman

"When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood — a truly free society." - Emma Goldman

"A nod is as good as a wink." - English Proverbs

"I cannot believe that God would make to a sinner in his wants and his woes the tender of a relief which did not exist, or which he did not wish him to embrace; I cannot believe that God would command his creatures to embrace a provision which had never been made for them, or sanction by the peril of one’s everlasting interests a commandment which he never meant should be obeyed, and which itself precluded the possibility of obedience." - Erskine Mason

"When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"I had gone... to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now. But if you have had it you know." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"EconomicsÂ… deals with goods in accordance with their market value and not in accordance with what they really are. The same rules and criteria are applied to primary goods, which man has to win from nature, and secondary goods, which presuppose the existence of primary goods, and are manufactured from them. All goods are treated the same, because the point of view is fundamentally that of private profit-making, and this means that it is inherent in the methodology of economics to ignore man's dependence on the natural world." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"A glimpse of Breidablick, whose walls are light as e'en the silver on the cliff it shone; of dark blue steel its columns azure height and the big altar was one agate stone. It seemed as if the air upheld alone its dome, unless supporting spirits bore it, studded with stars Odin's spangled throne, a light inscrutable burned fiercely o'er it; in sky-blue mantles, sat the gold-crowned gods before it." - Esaias Tegnér

"Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self-gratification - for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego - but rather of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown: in other words, of behaving as if the artistic existence were a form of life that bore witness to its own validity. The teacher foresees this danger. Carefully and with the adroitness of a psycho-pomp he seeks to head the pupil off in time and to detach him from himself. This he does by pointing out, casually and as though it were scarcely worth a mention in view of all that the pupil has already learned, that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as himself. Only the spirit is present, a kind of awareness which shows no trace of ego-hood and for that reason ranges without limit through all distances and depths, with eyes that hear and with ears that see." - Eugen Herrigel

"Our work creates neither life nor righteousness." - Eugene Peterson

"The mistake we so often make is thinking that GodÂ’s interest and care for us waxes and wanes according to our spiritual temperature." - Eugene Peterson

"I fell, giving the arm at least a million stairs | and now you're not there is a vacuum at each step ." - Eugenio Montale

"Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"It is a part of my religious belief that America is a land choice above all others, that we are not just another of the family of nations, but that we have been singled out to perform a divine mission for liberty-loving people everywhere. Those who founded this republic were wise men raised up by our Father in heaven to perform that very task, and the Constitution of this land was inspired by God. We have a divine duty — even a destiny — to preserve that Constitution from destruction and hold it aloft to the world." - Ezra Taft Benson

"It is not enough to be sincere. We must be right." - Ezra Taft Benson

"It’s a great blessing to live in America. It’s a great blessing to have the opportunity to enjoy the freedoms which are ours today. I have seen people, thousands of them, who have lost the freedom which is ours, where they can no longer meet, as we meet here this morning, and express themselves as they see fit, where they no longer have freedom of movement, freedom to select their own jobs, their own educational opportunities, freedom to speak their minds, to write what they wish – freedom of enterprise. In many parts of the world today these rich blessings of freedom no longer exist." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Not cheap politicians but statesmen are needed today. Not opportunists but men and women of principle must be demanded by the people. In this time of great stress and danger we must place [in office] only those dedicated to the preservation of our Constitution, our American Republic, and responsible freedom under God. “Oh, God, give us men with a mandate higher than the ballot box.”" - Ezra Taft Benson

"Surely the preservation and enjoyment of the freedoms vouchsafed to us by the Constitution of the United States will require eternal vigilance even to the guarding of it with our lives… We must ever be on our guard against the unsound theories that would strike at our Constitutional freedoms. We must ever keep faith with our founding fathers by keeping faith with our Constitution. I trust that we all have faith in the Constitution of the United States, and that that faith is born of an assurance that this great document came into being through the inspiration of God to wise men, embodying as it does, eternal principles. This nation has a spiritual foundation which must be preserved at any cost of sweat and blood. May we recognize our debt and responsibility and be ever vigilant. The need for this eternal and constant vigilance is seen in some prophetic words of Daniel Webster, given in 1802: “Next to correct morals and watchful guardianship over the Constitution is the proper means for its support. No human advantage is indefensible. The fairest productions of man have in themselves or receive from accident a tendency to decay. Unless the Constitution be constantly fostered on the principles which created it, its excellency will fade; and it will feel, even in its infancy, the weakness and decrepitude of age. “Our form of government is superior to all others, inasmuch as it provides, in a fair and honorable manner for its own amendment. But it requires no gift or prophecy to foresee that this privilege may be seized on by demagogues, to introduce wild and destructive innovations. Under the gentle name of amendments, changes may be proposed which, if unresisted, will undermine the national compact, mar its fairest features, and reduce it finally to a dead letter. It abates nothing of the danger to say that alterations may be trifling and inconsiderable. If the Constitution be picked away by piecemeal, it is gone — and gone as effectually as if some military despot had grasped it at once, trampled it beneath his feet, and scattered its loose leaves in the wild winds.” If we are to keep faith with our Constitution, we must know it. Since it is the basis of our American way of life and our liberties every American should be familiar with it. We should read it periodically. How can people who are ignorant of the principles and guarantees of American government stand up in defense of it and our rights under the Constitution? The fundamentals and processes of free government should be known to every school boy — and his parents. No free people can ever survive if they are ignorant of and fail to understand the principles of free government!" - Ezra Taft Benson

"The Founding Fathers well understood human nature and its tendency to exercise unrighteous dominion when given authority. A Constitution was therefore designed to limit government to certain enumerated functions, beyond which was tyranny." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The high cost of low living." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside inÂ….The world would mold men by changing their environment. The world would shape human behavior." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were under no illusion that their work was done. They had carried freedom up to a new high, but had no idea that a pinnacle had been reached, that having reached the summit there was no more to be done. They were confident that we of succeeding generations would carry on. Along with the political freedom so dearly won came a climate which challenged manÂ’s intellect and ingenuity. People began to move freedom forward along lines possibly not envisaged by the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Freedom from backbreaking toil came with the invention and development of labor-saving devices in factories and on farms." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The sad and shocking story of what has happened in America in recent years must be told. Our people must have the facts. There is safety in an informed public. There is real danger in a complacent, uninformed citizenry. This is our real danger today. Yes, the truth must be told even at the risk of destroying, in large measure, the influence of men who are widely respected and loved by the American people. The stakes are high. Freedom and survival is the issue." - Ezra Taft Benson

"We must not be cast down or discouraged in this work. There is no basis for discouragement. We are not alone. We will not, we cannot fail if we will do our duty. The Lord will magnify us even beyond our present talents and abilities." - Ezra Taft Benson

"We must return to a love and respect for the basic spiritual concepts upon which this nation has been established. We must study the Constitution and the writings of the founding fathers." - Ezra Taft Benson

"When you are tempted to look elsewhere for greener pastures, just remember someone else is probably looking at yours. And if another pasture looks greener, perhaps it is getting better care and attention. Grass is always greener. . . where it is watered." - Ezra Taft Benson

"With all my heart I love our great nation. I have lived and traveled abroad just enough to make me appreciate rather fully what we have in America. To me the U. S. is not just another nation. It is not just one of a family of nations. The U. S. is a nation with a great mission to perform for the benefit and blessing of liberty-loving people everywhere." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Young people, your parents, with their maturity of years and experience you have not had, can provide wisdom, knowledge, and blessings to help you over life's pitfalls. You may find, that life's sweetest experiences come when you go to Mom and Dad for help." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, police up there; people trade, fight, dethrone their kings." - Gustave Flaubert