Great Throughts Treasury

"Yes. Now you know. Now you know. That's what it was to be alive, to move about in a cloud of ignorance, to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those-- of those about you, to spend and waste time as if you had a million years, to be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another. Now you know, that's the 'happy' existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man. But art not thou thyself giddy with the fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling me of the fashion? Much Ado About Nothing (Conrade at III, iii)" - William Shakespeare

"But it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common." - William Shakespeare

"A man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries ." - William James

"Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things." - William James

"The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfillment we can speak of is the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function." - William James

"When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome." - William James

"Now the time is come, That France must veil her lofty-plumed crest, And let her head fall into England's lap." -

"She had this one limitation, his darling Lois; she couldn’t look on her own eyes, had no idea what she was, resented almost his attention being so constantly fixed on something she wasn’t aware of." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

"And there my little doves did sit with feathers softly brown and glittering eyes that showed their right to general Nature's deep delight." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"I seek no copy now of life's first half: leave here the pages with long musing curled, and write me new my future's epigraph, new angel mine, unhoped for in the world!" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"We are afraid of the enormity of the possible." - Emil M. Cioran

"The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney, who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton, that Earnshaw had mortaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee. In that manner, Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighborhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant deprived of the advantage of wages, and quite unable to right himself, because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance that he has been wronged." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"The intimacy thus commenced, and grew rapidly: though it encountered temporary interruptions. Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish; and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but their both minds tending to the same point- one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed- they contrived in the end to reach it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"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

"Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist, when asked if he is a Newtonian or of a biologist when asked if he is a Pasteurian. There are truths so evident, so much a part of the peoplesÂ’ knowledge, that it is now useless to debate them. One should be a Marxist with the same naturalness with which one is a Newtonian in physics or a Pasteurian. If new facts bring about new concepts, the latter will never take away that portion of truth possessed by those that have come before. Such is the case, for example, of Einsteinian relativity or of PlanckÂ’s quantum theory in relation to NewtonÂ’s discoveries. They take absolutely nothing away from the greatness of the learned Englishman. Thanks to Newton, physics was able to advance until it achieved new concepts of space. The learned Englishman was the necessary stepping-stone for that. Obviously, one can point to certain mistakes of Marx, as a thinker and as an investigator of the social doctrines and of the capitalist system in which he lived. We Latin Americans, for example, cannot agree with his interpretation of Bolivar, or with his and EngelsÂ’ analysis of the Mexicans, which accepted as fact certain theories of race or nationality that are unacceptable today. But the great men who discover brilliant truths live on despite their small faults and these faults serve only to show us they were human. That is to say, they were human beings who could make mistakes, even given the high level of consciousness achieved by these giants of human thought. This is why we recognize the essential truths of Marxism as part of humanityÂ’s body of cultural and scientific knowledge. We accept it with the naturalness of something that requires no further argument." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"Without doubt it is natural to include that love long what we love so much." - Étienne Pivert de Senancour