Great Throughts Treasury

"Try to imagine a culture in which no one has ever "looked up" anything. In a primary oral culture, the expression "to look up something" is an empty phrase: it would have no conceivable meaning." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand." - Walter Savage Landor

"An Invocation - We are what suns and winds and waters make us; the mountains are our sponsors, and the rills fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. But where the land is dim from tyranny, there tiny pleasures occupy the place of glories and of duties; as the feet of fabled faeries when the sun goes down trip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day. Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above, is more inconstant than the buoyant form that burst into existence from the froth of ever-varying ocean: what is best then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deform’d. The heart is hardest in the softest climes, the passions flourish, the affections die. O thou vast tablet of these awful truths, that fillest all the space between the seas, spreading from Venice’s deserted courts to the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole, what lifts thee up? What shakes thee? ’t is the breath of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life! Let the last work of his right hand appear fresh with his image, Man." - Walter Savage Landor

"Who can look at this exquisite little creature seated on its cushion, and not acknowledge its prerogative of life—that mysterious influence which in spite of the stubborn understanding masters the mind, sending it back to days long past, when care was but a dream, and its most serious business a childish frolic? But we no longer think of childhood as the past, still less as an abstraction; we see it embodied before us, in all its mirth, and fun, and glee, and the grave man becomes again a child, to feel as a child, and to follow the little enchanter through all its wiles and never-ending labyrinth of pranks. What can be real if that is not which so takes us out of our present selves that the weight of years falls from us as a garment; that the freshness of life seems to begin anew; and the heart and the fancy, resuming their first joyous consciousness, to launch again into this moving world, as on a sunny sea whose pliant waves yield to the touch, sparkling and buoyant, carry them onward in their merry gambols? Where all the purposes of reality are answered, if there be no philosophy in admitting, we see no wisdom in disputing it." -

"Make yourself available for success, and know and trust in an invisible force that's all-providing." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery." - Wendell Berry

"Nothing is given that is not Taken, and nothing taken That was not first gift. The gift is balanced by its total loss, and yet, And yet the light breaks in, Heaven seizing its moments That are at once its own and yours." - Wendell Berry

"Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but he who really takes it seriously he will not be put off by that opposition." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free; the next, this." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was, however; there she was." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour--landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard... But after life. The slow pulling down of thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here, helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"Sages discovered this link of the existent to the nonexistent, having searched in the heart with wisdom." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"He performs worship ceremonies, applies the ceremonial tilak mark to his forehead, and takes his ritual cleansing baths; he pulls out his knife, and demands donations." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"In his hearth and home, in his palace, upon his soft and comfortable bed, day and night, the flower-girls scatter flower petals; but without the Lord's Name, the body is miserable. Horses, elephants, lances, marching bands, armies, standard bearers, royal attendants and ostentatious displays - without the Lord of the Universe, these undertakings are all useless." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The same gold is fashioned into various articles; just so, the Lord has made the many patterns of the creation." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"You must be uncomfortable when those around you are unhappy; when you ease their discomfort, you are making them happy and making yourself happy, isn't it?" - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"It is a pity that men cannot usually possess no talent without any desire to put others down." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"We must all wait and worry all the time and men." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Young people know love rather than beauty." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"All afflictions are based on selfishness. That's why we have so much anger and so many afflictions." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"The image of the Buddha on the altar is clearly not a divinity or Sage. It is a representation, an artistic image ... that points back to human who realized the highest wisdom. The Buddha cultivated his nature to an awakened state. The image symbolizes his realization of humanity's potential and aspiration for the highest goodness and compassion. When you bow, symbolically you honor your own potential for great wisdom. Furthermore, bowing is good exercise. It is not idol worship, which is superstitious and passive. Bowing to the Buddha is a practice of a principle; it is dynamic and active." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. - To understand everything we must be as God." - Tryon Edwards

"Every bad has its worse. (Used to make a point that things can always go even worse and one should make the best of current situation.)" - Turkish Proverbs

"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

"Don't trust a hungry man to watch your rice." - Tibetan Proverbs

"Admit impediments. Love is not love" - William Shakespeare

"Adultery? Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No. The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To 't, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers. King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6" - William Shakespeare

"Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch, to try if thou be current gold indeed: young Edward lives." - William Shakespeare

"Allow not nature more than nature needs. King Lear, Act ii, Scene 4" - William Shakespeare

"Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy? Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death." - William James

"Grant that I may worship and pray unto Thee with as much reverence and godly fear, as if I saw the heavens open and all the angels that stand around Thy throne. Amen." - William Law

"Reformation If it be the earnest desire and longing of your heart to be merciful as He is merciful; to be full of His unwearied patience, to dwell in His unalterable meekness; if you long to be like Him in universal, impartial love; if you desire to communicate every good to every creature that you are able; if you love and practice everything that is good, righteous, and lovely for its own sake, because it is good, righteous, and lovely; and resist no evil but with goodness; then you have the utmost certainty that the Spirit of God dwells and governs in you." - William Law

"Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness." - William Law

"You are to honor, improve, and perfect the spirit that is within you: you are to prepare it for the kingdom of heaven, to nourish it with the love of God and of virtue, to adorn it with good works, and to make it as holy and heavenly as you can." - William Law

"Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed." - William Morris

"A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial, we miss the most important." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The sort of liveliness which increases with age is not far distant from madness." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives behind them." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"O thoughts of men accurst! Past and to come seems best; things present, worst." - William Shakespeare