Great Throughts Treasury

"Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon's reflection." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Majority rule is no more a natural right than is equality. When we accept the principle of majorities in politics, we do so out of prudence and expediency, not because of an abstract moral injunction." - Russell Kirk

"Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them." - Samuel Adams

"No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could." - Samuel Butler

"There is no mystery about art. Do the things that you can see; they will show you those that you cannot see. By doing what you can you will gradually get to know what it is that you want to do and cannot do, and so be able to do it." - Samuel Butler

"One ought to read just as inclination takes him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to it, and secures its achievement. To think we are able, is almost to be so / to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself." - Samuel Smiles

"What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford, - periunt et imputantur, - the hours perish, and are laid to our charge; for time, like life, can never be recalled." - Samuel Smiles

"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen ... but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a" - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as "right" in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as "brute force."" - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression [aggressiveness]." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets." - Simone Weil

"No matter what happened afterward, nothing would take those moments away from me; nothing has taken them away; they shine in my past with a brilliance that has never been tarnished. [About Liberation Day]" - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Time passed and I was fixed in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of reviving our sex life spellbound in memory of our nights than once. I imagine I have kept my face and my body instead of thirty years to heal my body. I left my intelligence atrophy; I cultivated more and I said, 'Later, when the girls have left me.'" - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Every happiness is a hostage to fortune." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live, than to be loved by them. And this is not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"It is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think that he will be a lion in war." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else." - Stanley Kubrick

"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The intricate and different life cycles of both male and female root-heads, and the great behavioral sophistication shown by the female in reconfiguring a host crab as a support system, all underscore the myopia of our conventional wisdom in regarding rhizocephalans as degenerate parasites because the adult anatomy of internal roots and external sac seem so simple." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have any boundary or edge. They would be like the surface of the earth, but with two more dimensions." - Stephen Hawking

"I think he's informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven't the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen

"A good book is the purest essence of a human soul." - Thomas Carlyle

"For all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad." - Thomas Carlyle

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels. In fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite." - Thomas Carlyle

"My wife s in judge of me, Murdered in cold blood is what I m gonna be, I ain t been home since Friday night, And now my wife Is comin after me." - Thomas Dewar, Lord Dewar, fully Thomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

"The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax." - Thomas Dewar, Lord Dewar, fully Thomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

"But one of the Naturall Lawes deriv'd from this fundamentall one is this,That the right of all men, to all things, ought not to be retain'd, but that some certain rights ought to be transferr'd, or relinquisht: for if every one should retain his right to all things, it must necessarily follow, that some by right might invade; and others, by the same right, might defend themselves against them, (for every man, by naturall necessity, endeavours to defend his Body, and the things which he judgeth necessary towards the protection of his Body) therefore War would follow. He therefore acts against the reason of Peace, (i.e.) against the Law of Nature, whosoever he be, that doth not part with his Right to all things." - Thomas Hobbes

"They suppose that woman's love is sin; in consequence all the loves and graces with them are sin." - William Blake

"This application of the concept of statistical laws was finally formulated in the second half of the last century as the so-called statistical mechanics. In this theory, which is based on Newton's mechanics, the consequences that spring from an incomplete knowledge of a complicated mechanical system are investigated. Thus in principle it is not a renunciation of determinism. The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. .. This state of affairs is best described by saying that all particles are basically nothing but different stationary states of one and the same stuff. Thus even the three basic building-stones have become reduced to a single one. There is only one kind of matter but it can exist in different discrete stationary conditions." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

"I have never heard you complain: "You promote me to be the future master of myself and the world, but you don't tell me how one is to be the master of oneself, and you don't tell me the mistakes in my thinking and my actions."" - Wilhelm Reich

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds." - Walter Bagehot

"The assistance you need will be provided by the universe as soon as you convert your readiness to willingness." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish." - Wendell Berry

"The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"When I consider others I can easily believe that their bodies express their personalities and that the two are inseparable. But it is impossible for me not to feel that my body is other than I, that I inhabit it like a house, and that my face is a mask which, with or without my consent, conceals my real nature from others." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"John, she said, does it make every one unhappy when they study and learn lots of things. He paused and smiled. I am afraid it does, he said. And, John, are you glad you studied? Yes, came the answer, slowly but positively. She watched the flickering lights upon the sea, and said thoughtfully, I wish I was unhappy,—and—and, putting both arms about his neck, I think I am, a little, John." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder - I believe she stole it from her mother’s Spanish maid - a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing - and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the house her mother’s voice calling her, with a rising frantic note - and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"All our emotions and thoughts are conditioned reflexes, reactions." - Vimala Thakar

"The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"It is not a disaster to discover that you are not the person you assumed you were. To the contrary, it is the beginning of the end of disaster. Experiment: How you feel if you were neither a success or failure in life? How would you feel if you were neither popular nor unwanted?" - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"The leap is made by dropping vanity over knowledge and by a willingness to become nothing in order to become everything." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard