Great Throughts Treasury

"The failure described in Being and Nothingness is definitive, but it is also ambiguous. Man, Sartre tells us, is “a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that there might be being.” That means, first of all, that his passion is not inflicted upon him from without. He chooses it. It is his very being and, as such, does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is considered as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value before the passion of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful. The word “useful” has not yet received a meaning on the level of description where Being and Nothingness is situated. It can be defined only in the human world established by man’s projects and the ends he sets up. In the original helplessness from which man surges up, nothing is useful, nothing is useless. It must therefore be understood that the passion to which man has acquiesced finds no external justification. No outside appeal, no objective necessity permits of its being called useful. It has no reason to will itself. But this does not mean that it can not justify itself, that it cannot give itself reasons for being that it does not have. And indeed Sartre tells us that man makes himself this lack of being in order that there might be being. The term in order that clearly indicates an intentionality. It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and he desires this disclosure. There is an original type of attachment to being which is not the relationship “wanting to be” but rather “wanting to disclose being.” Now, here there is not failure, but rather success." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"I have no concern for the common man except that he should not be so common." - Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson

"A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night. 'Awake, Watson?' he asked. 'Yes.' 'Game for a morning drive?' 'Certainly.' 'Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"A woman's dream of taking it away, like a tiger cub to take away." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Like many men who override the opinions of others, Challenger was exceedingly sensitive when anyone took a liberty with his own" - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can." - Stefan Zweig

"Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable." - Stefan Zweig

"Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets. These may be put on a frame of little sticks and turned round. This causes the tides. Those at the ends of the sticks are enormously far away. From time to time a diligent searching of the sticks reveals new planets. The orbit of the planet is the distance the stick goes round in going round. Astronomy is intensely interesting; it should be done at night, in a high tower at Spitzbergen. This is to avoid the astronomy being interrupted. A really good astronomer can tell when a comet is coming too near him by the warning buzz of the revolving sticks." - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book." - Thomas Carlyle

"Song From The Persian - Ah, sad are they who know not love, But, far from passion's tears and smiles, Drift down a moonless sea, beyond The silvery coasts of fairy isles. And sadder they whose longing lips Kiss empty air, and never touch The dear warm mouth of those they love -- Waiting, wasting, suffering much. But clear as amber, fine as musk, Is life to those who, pilgrim-wise, Move hand in hand from dawn to dusk, Each morning nearer Paradise. Ah, not for them shall angels pray! They stand in everlasting light, They walk in Allah's smile by day, And slumber in his heart by night. " - Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"From ‘Milton’ - And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land. " - William Blake

"When early morn walks forth in sober grey, Then to my black-eyed maid I haste away; When evening sits beneath her dusky bow’r, And gently sighs away the silent hour, The village bell alarms, away I go, And the vale darkens at my pensive woe. To that sweet village, where my black-eyed maid Doth drop a tear beneath the silent shade, I turn my eyes; and pensive as I go Curse my black stars and bless my pleasing woe. Oft when the summer sleeps among the trees, Whisp’ring faint murmurs to the scanty breeze, I walk the village round; if at her side A youth doth walk in stolen joy and pride, I curse my stars in bitter grief and woe, That made my love so high and me so low. O should she e’er prove false, his limbs I’d tear And throw all pity on the burning air; I’d curse bright fortune for my mixèd lot, And then I’d die in peace and be forgot." - William Blake

"Every night and every morn some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night." - William Blake

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow." - William Blake

"When a man has married a wife he finds out whether her knees and elbows are only glued together." - William Blake

"Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"It may not be amiss to add, for the benefit of incredulous readers, that all the 'improbable events' in the story are matters of fact, taken from the printed narrative." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"You are one of the most remarkable women England - you have never written a novel." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"It is said culture requires slaves. I say that no cultured society can be built with slaves. This terrible Twentieth Century has made all cultural theories from Plato down seem ridiculous. Little man, there has never been a human culture." - Wilhelm Reich

"Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entertied, braced in the beams, stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers o'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours. A hundred lights in every temple burn, and at each shrine I bend my knee in turn." - Walter Savage Landor

"Teach him to live unto God and unto thee; and he will discover that women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade." - Walter Savage Landor

"Very true, the linnets sing sweetest in the leaves of spring: you have found in all these leaves that which changes and deceives, and, to pine by sun or star, left them, false ones as they are. But there be who walk beside Autumn's, till they all have died, and who lend a patient ear to low notes from branches sere." - Walter Savage Landor

"Gentle words, quiet words, are after all, the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing." - Washington Gladden

"All those snug junketings and public gormandizings, for which the ancient magistrates were equally famous with their modern successors." - Washington Irving

"Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine - no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery." - Washington Irving

"If the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?" - Wendell Berry

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are." - Wendell Berry

"It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that." - Wendell Berry

"Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world." - Walker Percy

"How does one stand to behold the sublime, to confront the mockers, the mickey mockers and plated pairs?" - Wallace Stevens

"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of eachother's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"If you go off to die, then take us, too, to face all things with you; but if your past still lets you put your hope in arms, which now you have put on, then first protect this house." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"The mother shall sleep, the father shall sleep, the dog shall sleep, the lord of the house shall sleep. All her relations shall sleep, and these people round about shall sleep." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad" - Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

"Well may he be content to live a hundred years who acts without attachment who works his work with earnestness, but without desire, not yearning for its fruits – he, and he alone. – Isha Upanishad" - Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

"The rich man goes out yachting, where sanctity can't pursue him; the poor goes afloat in a fourpenny boat, where the bishop groans to view him." - Thomas Love Peacock

"For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him." - Thucydides NULL

"And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh, That unmatched form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy. Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Ophelia at III, i)" - William Shakespeare

"Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,— I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. King Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4." - William Shakespeare

"Blood will have blood." - William Shakespeare

"Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall—and farewell king! King Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 2." - William Shakespeare

"Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon. King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. 2." - William Shakespeare

"I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible." - William James

"I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are should have exactly the same functions nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner." - William James