Great Throughts Treasury

"One need not mind stealing, but one must cry out at people whose minds are so befuddled that they do not know theft when they see it." -

"The only people who never fail are those who never try." - Ilka Chase

"A thousand logical statements will be destroyed in the face of one light desire. When a person’s desires overcome his intellect, he becomes an idiot... It is a daily occurrence that people who follow their desires do foolish things that will destroy them both in this world and the next." - Yehuda Leib Chasman

"Envy is such a part of many people’s personalities that it is not reasonable to expect them to completely eradicate this trait. Rather, they should channel it in a positive direction. Let them envy those with wisdom so they will try to gain more wisdom." - Yehuda Leib Chasman

"We do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"Every human soul has the germ of some flowers within; and they would open, if they could only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there is." -

"In politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to chance influences." -

"If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"By discharging our duty thoroughly and well, subordinating personal desires to principle, and personal ambition to an exalted love of country, we will not only receive the endorsement of the people, but, what is far better, we will deserve their endorsement." - Champ Clark, formally James Beauchamp Clark

"Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company." - Jeremy Collier

"Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance." - Jeremy Collier

"With endless patience you shall carry out your duty, and your firmness shall be tempered with tenderness for your people. Neither anger nor fury shall lodge in your mind, and all your words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation. In all your deliberations in the Council, in your efforts at lawmaking, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. Cast not away the warnings of any others, if they should chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law, which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the earth - the unborn of the future Nation." - Constitution of the Five Nations NULL

"If you try to subdue your selfish motives - anger and so forth - and develop more kindness and compassion for others, ultimately you yourself will benefit more than you would otherwise. So sometimes I say that the wise selfish person should practice this way. Foolish selfish people are always thinking of themselves, and the result is negative. Wise selfish people think of others, help others as much as they can, and the result is that they too receive benefit." -

"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past." - Robertson Davies

"A treaty, in the minds of our people, is an eternal word. Events often make it seem expedient to depart from the pledged word, but we are conscious that the first departure creates a logic for the second departure, until there is nothing left of the word." - Declaration of Indian Purpose NULL

"Some people regret that they have poor memories. Alas! it is much more difficult to forget." - Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

"If a person demands to have everything he wishes, the lack of even a small pleasure can make him feel extremely unhappy. Excessive demands can even lead some people to consider their entire lives as worthless if they are missing some minor pleasure that they arbitrarily demand." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

"Pleasure comes from obtaining what we feel we are lacking. We have the ability to choose our answer to the question, “What am I lacking right now?” Some people answer materialistically. It is wiser to choose to focus on your lack of spiritual accomplishments and then you can derive pleasure from meeting those needs." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

"Some people gauge their value by what they own. But in reality the entire concept of ownership of possessions is based on an illusion. When you obtain a material object, it does not become part of you. Ownership is merely your right to use specific objects whenever you wish and that no one has a right to take them away from you. How unfortunate is the person who has an ambition to cleave to something impossible to cleave to. Such a person will not obtain what he desires and will experience suffering." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

"Spend time thinking about the virtues of other people. Do not merely do this as a passing thought, but try to feel pleasure in thinking of their virtues." - Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

"Occupied people are not unhappy people." - Orville Dewey

"Some people study all their life, and at their death they have learned everything except to think." - Francois Urbain Domergue

"As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

"If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

"We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." -

"People are very inclined to set moral standards for others." -

"We can change our whole life and the attitude of people around us simply by changing ourselves." - Rudolf Driekurs

"People may change their minds as often as their coats, and new sets of rules of conduct may be written every week, but the fact remains that human nature has not changed and does not change, that inherent human beliefs stay the same; the fundamental rules of human conduct continue to hold." - Lammot du Pont

"A major cause of many people’s sadness is their lack of attaining things they could live without." - Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." - Walter Duranty

"You can't stop the people from thinking - but you can start them." - J. Stanley Durkee

"Live by admiration rather than disgust. Judge people by their best, not by their worst." - Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

"Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live." - Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

"He who does reverence to his own sect, while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the glory of his own sect, in reality by such conduct inflicts the severest injury on his own sect. Concord therefore is meritorious, to wit, hearkening and hearkening willingly to the Law of Piety, as accepted by other people." - Edicts of Ashoka NULL

"People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there." - Bob Edwards, fully Robert Alan "Bob" Edwards

"People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher and better than themselves." - Tyron Edwards

"No person sees all of his faults. Every person considers himself righteous an feels whatever he does is correct. For every act a person does, he has a thousand excuses and rationalizations. A person does not see what goes against his prejudices. Other people can be much more objective about you and can find your wrongdoings and faults. Hence, be willing to listen to what an admonisher has to say." - Y. Eibeschuetz

"Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions and very persistent and determined in action thereafter." - L. G. Elliott, fully Lloyd George Elliott

"Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed." - Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

"Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of intelligence, energy and virtue. The proofs to which the people are submitted, as with individuals, are necessary then to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose their character." - Fearon NULL

"Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses itself any reaction with regard to itself or its deeds. This virtue differs from and surpasses sincerity. We see many people who are sincere without being simple. They do not wish to be taken for other than what they are; but they are always fearing lest they should be taken for what they are not." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"There is no more dangerous illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion. It is imagination which leads us astray; and the certainty which we seek through imagination, feeling, and taste, is one of the most dangerous sources from which fanaticism springs." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"People are more easily led than driven." -

"People are more easily led than driven." - David Harold Fink

"In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely." - Geoffrey Francis Fisher

"Do people love truth? On the contrary, mankind has employed its subtlest ingenuity and intelligence in efforts to evade or conceal it... Do human beings love justice? The sordid travesties in our courts year after year suggest that they love justice only for themselves. Do they love peace? Can anyone seriously ask the question? Do they love freedom? Only for those who share their views. Love of peace, freedom, justice, truth - this is a myth that has been created by the folk mind, and if the artist does not look behind the myth to the reality, he will indeed wander amid the phantoms which he creates." - Vardis Fisher, fully Vardis Alvero Fisher

"One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life." - E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster

"Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"It is by acts and not by ideas that people live." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

"A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud