Great Throughts Treasury

"If he were in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that became my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him... Never would have missed her company, while she wanted. At the moment the affection disappeared, I would have ripped the heart and drank his blood. But until then... would have let me die in pieces before touching a hair on his head." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"It is no more my business to marry Edgar Linton than to be in heaven and if the wicked man who is here and had not degraded Heathcliff, I would have never thought. It would degrade me myself now than to marry Heathcliff. Also does he ever know how I like, and this, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. From whatever our souls are made, his and mine are the same and the Linton is as different from ours as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"I've watched thee every hour — I know my mighty sway — I know my magic power to drive thy griefs away —" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"My great thought is in himself. If all else perished and he remained I should still continue to be and if all else remained and he were annihilated the universe would turn into a mighty stranger. I would not seem apart of it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees — my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again — it is impracticable." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels — its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound — o, dreadful is the check — intense the agony when the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see; when the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, the soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain. Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; the more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless; and robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine if it but herald death, the vision is divine —" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least, for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! 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

"Though earth and man were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Today I will not seek the shadowy region; its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; and visions rising, legion after legion, bring the unreal world too strangely near." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"We'll see the same face of the wind toll. Does he also distorted in any other month of the two trees, destroying Was it? Heathcliff" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend--if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I'll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"You and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence apart from us. What would be the sense of self has been created, if contained only in myself? The big disappointments I had were the dislikes of Heathcliff, and I felt each from the beginning: what is it makes me live. If everything else was over, and he remained, I would continue to exist, and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would become a huge unknown. My love for Linton is like the foliage of the forest. Time will change it, I'm sure, just as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks: provides a little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering away your life on silly trifles." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force." - Emma Goldman

"Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there." - Emma Goldman

"I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it." - Emma Goldman

"In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values." - Emma Goldman

"Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman." - Emma Goldman

"Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king." - Emma Goldman

"Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began." - Emma Goldman

"Redemption through the Cross is worse than damnation, because of the terrible burden it imposes upon humanity, because of the effect it has on the human soul, fettering and paralyzing it with the weight of the burden exacted through the death of Christ." - Emma Goldman

"The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution — particularly the Socialist idea — is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat— or by that of its advance guard,the Communist Party. Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice." - Emma Goldman

"The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy." - Emma Goldman

"What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?' No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged." - Emma Goldman

"If every pure character in the Old Testament announces the Messiah, if every unworthy person is his torturer and every woman his Mother, does not the Book of Books lose all life with this obsessive theme?" - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"Nothing responds to us, but this silence; the voice of this silence is understood and frightens like the silence of those infinite spaces Pascal speaks of." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"He who minds his neighbor's business neglects his own." - Emmet Fox

"Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brothers and sisters, for, in truth, we are all one, and the more deeply they seem to err, the more urgent is the need for us to help them with the right thought, and so make it easier for them to get free." - Emmet Fox

"Silent prayer is more powerful than audible prayer, because by silent prayer the mind comes closer to creative Spirit." - Emmet Fox

"The poor in spirit suffer from none of these embarrassments, either because they never had them, or because they have risen above them on the tide of spiritual understanding. They have got rid of the love of money and property, of fear of public opinion, and of the disapproval of relatives or friends. They are no longer overawed by human authority, however august. They are no longer cocksure in their own opinions. They have come to see that their most cherished beliefs may have been and probably were mistaken, and that all their ideas and views of life may be false and in need of recasting. They are ready to start again at the very beginning and learn life anew." - Emmet Fox

"The root of all difficulties is a lack of the sense of the Presence of God." - Emmet Fox

"There is a truly spiritual mode of communication from which nothing but good can come. It is this: Sit down quietly and remind yourself that the one God really is Omnipresent. Then reflect that your real self is in the Presence of God now, and that the real selves of others are also in the Presence of God. Do this for a few minutes every day, and sooner or later you will get a sense of communication." - Emmet Fox

"There is no need to be unhappy. There is no need to be sad. There is no need to be disappointed, or oppressed, or aggrieved. There is no need for illness or failure or discouragement. There is no necessity for anything but success, good health, prosperity, and an abounding interest and joy in life." - Emmet Fox

"What is right may well be said even twice." - Empedocles NULL

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the man was lost." - English Proverbs

"He that has no money needs no purse." - English Proverbs

"We are not ‘everything,’ but neither are we ‘nothing.’ Spirituality is discovered in that space between paradox’s extremes, for there we confront our helplessness and powerlessness, our woundedness. In seeking to understand our limitations, we seek not only an easing of our pain but an understanding of what it means to hurt and what it means to be healed. Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to ‘blame’ for our errors — neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us first to see, and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the very core of our human be-ing. " - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

"Some of the best friends we have are books. Why? Well, they belong usually to our relaxed armchair hours. They come only if chosen; hence they suit the mood or the taste, whether for humor, fantasy, adventure or mystery. In a trice they can take us with them to far places and other times. Best of all, they don't talk back or force themselves upon us, but, like patient, loving friends, wait until we give them our attention. And always, they are as near as our bookshelf when we need them." - Esther Baldwin York

"When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It looks as though it had been there all along." - Eva Zeisel

"Her handwriting was curious, small sharp little letters with no capitals (who did she think she was, e. e. cummings?)." - Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

"I think the Peace Corps is a fine thing, don't you? he said. Well, I replied, it's certainly better than War Corps." - Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

"We have turned doctors into gods and worship their deity by offering up our bodies and our souls - not to mention our worldly goods. And yet paradoxically, they are the most vulnerable of human beings. Their suicide rate is eight times the national average. Their percentage of drug addiction is one hundred times higher. And because they are painfully aware that they cannot live up to our expectations, their anguish is unquantifiably intense. They have aptly been called 'wounded healers.'" - Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

"Singing is probably the better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and itÂ’s cheaper, too." - Erin McKean

"A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste