Great Throughts Treasury

"The fact is that everyone is much too busily preoccupied with himself to be able to form a serious opinion about another person. The indolent world is all too ready to treat any man with whatever degree of respect corresponds to his own self-confidence." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"The positive thing about the skeptic is that he considers everything possible!" - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrace reality and thus find ourselves immersed in the life-giving will and wisdom of God which surrounds us everywhere." - Thomas Merton

"Men in bowlers and dark suits with their rolled-up umbrellas. Men full of propriety, calm and proud, neat and noble." - Thomas Merton

"Will is an ambiguous word, being sometimes put for the faculty of willing; sometimes for the act of that faculty; besides other meanings. But “volition” always signifies the act of willing, and nothing else." - Thomas Reid

"Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which; that character affects our own interests and passions." - Thomas Macaulay, fully Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

"Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more important, of who we are, and who we might become. They unlock our energies, our imaginations, and our minds. Effective teachers pose compelling questions, explain options, teach us to reason, suggest possible directions, and urge us on. The best teachers, like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives." - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

"A divine nature has no need of statues or altars; but human nature being very imbecile, and as much distant from divinity as earth from heaven, devised these symbols, in which it inserted the names and the renown of the gods. Those, therefore, whose memory is robust, and who are able, by directly extending their soul to heaven, to meet with divinity, have, perhaps no need of statues. This race is, however, rare among men, and in a whole nation you will not find one who recollects divinity, and who is not in want of this kind of assistance." - Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL

"No human being can make another one happy." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Throughout heaven and earth is Mind [hsin], whose changes are unpredictable. It is inexorably manifested in myriad different forms. The mind has no fundamental substance. Fundamental substance is that which is achieved by its efficacious effort. Therefore, to plumb th principle is to prob e the myriad different forms of the Mind, not the myriad different forms of myriad things." - Wang Fuzhi or Fu-chih or Fuchih, pseudonym Chuanshan, courtesy name Ernong

"Song of an Old General - When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. Fighting single- handed for a thousand miles, With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. ...Granted that the troops of China were as swift as heaven's thunder And that Tartar soldiers perished in pitfalls fanged with iron, General Wei Qing's victory was only a thing of chance. And General Li Guang's thwarted effort was his fate, not his fault. Since this man's retirement he is looking old and worn: Experience of the world has hastened his white hairs. Though once his quick dart never missed the right eye of a bird, Now knotted veins and tendons make his left arm like an osier. He is sometimes at the road-side selling melons from his garden, He is sometimes planting willows round his hermitage. His lonely lane is shut away by a dense grove, His vacant window looks upon the far cold mountains But, if he prayed, the waters would come gushing for his men And never would he wanton his cause away with wine. ...War-clouds are spreading, under the Helan Range; Back and forth, day and night, go feathered messages; In the three River Provinces, the governors call young men -- And five imperial edicts have summoned the old general. So he dusts his iron coat and shines it like snow- Waves his dagger from its jade hilt in a dance of starry steel. He is ready with his strong northern bow to smite the Tartar chieftain -- That never a foreign war-dress may affront the Emperor. ...There once was an aged Prefect, forgotten and far away, Who still could manage triumph with a single stroke." - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

"Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine

"His mind his kingdom, and his will his law." - William Cowper

"The dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne , and worship only thee." - William Cowper

"People who read stories are said to have excitable brains." - 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

"If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"The relative equality of Americans before 1776 has been overwhelmed by a thousand forms of physical, mental, and economic differentiation, so that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than any time since Imperial plutocratic Rome." - Will and Ariel Durant

"Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself — life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?" - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"I say this in dead earnest -- if, because of some fine speeches about humanity, you return this administration to office, you will be serving under an American totalitarian government before the long third term is finished." - Wendell Lewis Willkie

"Both matter and radiation possess a remarkable duality of character, as they sometimes exhibit the properties of waves, at other times those of particles. Now it is obvious that a thing cannot be a form of wave motion and composed of particles at the same time - the two concepts are too different." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

"It is precisely this "simplicity" in human intercourse that is so incomprehensible to the armored organism. Everything natural and profound is simple. The simple, grand lines of emotional expression are known to characterize the great painter, musician, poet, novelist and scientist. But the simple is alien to the armored organism. Its impulses are so complicated in their form of expression, the manner of their utterance is so muddled and contradictory that it has no organ for the simple and unequivocal emotional expression. It even lacks a sense of simplicity. Its love is mixed with hatred and anxiety. The unarmored organism loves unequivocally in love situations, hates unequivocally where hatred is legitimate, and fears unequivocally where fear is rational. The armored organism hates where it should love, loves where it should hate, and is frightened where it should love or hate. Complexity is the specific life expression of the armored person He is trapped, as it were, in the multiple contradictions of his existence. Since he approaches all experiences with his complex character structure, his experiences become equally complicated. He is amazed at the accomplishments in the area of special talent barred to him. "Genius" become a kind of abnormal monster, because he cannot understand the great simplicity in the life expression of "genius." In the consistent stripping away of the layers of character, one discovers that complexity epitomizes the defensive mechanism in its purest form. The armored person is complicated because he has a mortal terror of everything simple, straightforward and direct. I say: mortal terror. This is no literary exaggeration. The word accurately describes the process: the simple, straightforward, direct expression inescapably leads periodically to orgastic plasma convulsions." - Wilhelm Reich

"Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture." - Wilhelm Reich

"Do a good job. You don't have to worry about the money; it will take care of itself. Just do your best work — then try to trump it." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"The past and the present wilt. I have fill’d them, emptied them, and proceed to fill my next fold of the future." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The smallest sprout shows there is really no death; and if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses; and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Print created a new sense of the private ownership of words. Persons in a primary oral culture can entertain some sense of proprietary rights to a poem, but such a sense is rare and ordinarily enfeebled by the common share of lore, formulas, and themes on which everyone draws. With writing, resentment at plagiarism begins to develop." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"But when we play the fool, how wide the theatre expands! beside, how long the audience sits before us! How many prompters! What a chorus!" - Walter Savage Landor

"Truth is a point, the subtlest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life blood of those who press earnestly upon it." - Walter Savage Landor

"Rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains on a journey of less than thirty miles... Rapids hum over heaped rocks; but where light grows dim in the thick pines, the surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns and weeds are lush along the banks. ...Down in my heart I have always been as pure as this limpid water is... Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock and to cast a fishing-line forever!" - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

"The mountains are cold and blue now and the autumn waters have run all day. By my thatch door, leaning on my staff, I listen to cicadas in the evening wind. Sunset lingers at the ferry, supper-smoke floats up from the houses. ..Oh, when shall I pledge the great Hermit again and sing a wild poem at Five Willows?" - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

"If someone starts talking to you about beta, zip up your pocketbook." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman." - Washington Irving

"By a kind of fashionable discipline, the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to emanate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness and good-will." - Washington Irving

"Do not administer punishment when angry." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Every fall that you take is a gift, and every relapse is a glorious opportunity — after all, without them you can’t manifest the energy to get to a higher place." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Stop waiting for others to change. Recognize that every person has the right to be whatever they choose—even if you irritate yourself about it." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going." - Wendell Berry

"It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits." - Wendell Berry