Great Throughts Treasury

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

"I hope we don't lose in America this demand that those of us who want this office must be prepared not to handle the 10-second gimmick that deals, say, with little things like war and peace." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed that by what it achieved." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

"What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects." - 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

"Thought is nested in speech, not in texts, all of which have their meanings through reference of the visible symbol to the world of sound. What the reader is seeing on this page are not real words but coded symbols whereby a properly informed human being can evoke in his or her consciousness real words, in actual or imagined sound." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"Without a terrific leader, you're not going to have a Great Group. But it is also true that you're not going to have a great leader without a Great Group." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

"Despite three years of falling prices, which have significantly improved the attractiveness of common stocks, we still find very few that even mildly interest us. That dismal fact is testimony to the insanity of valuations reached during The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, the hangover may prove to be proportional to the binge." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"I really like my life. I’ve arranged my life so that I can do what I want." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we've got a system that allows them to do it." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"A little while, and the load shall drop at the pilgrim's feet, where the steep and thorny road doth merge in the golden street." - Washington Gladden

"When any duty is to be done, it is fortunate for you if you feel like doing it; but, if you do not feel like it, that is no reason for not doing it." - Washington Gladden

"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

"Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little." - Washington Irving

"The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind." - Washington Irving

"The taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called landscape gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied nature intently, and discover an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which in other countries she lavishes in wild solitudes are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes." - Washington Irving

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

"I will send love, but I will remove myself physically from their presence because I am too divine and significant to be the subject of any abuse." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Listen to your own heart concerning the path you wish to travel. Even if your entire life training has been in one direction, if it is not what you feel now, then begin the adventure of exploring a less-traveled road." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Problems in relationship occur because each person is concentrating on what is missing in the other person." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"?What other people think of me is none of my business. One of the highest places you can get to is being independent of the good opinions of other people." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"People often try to control countries or companies with rules, regulations and policing. This feels like it should work since we can control our car or build structures with principles, checking etc." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"'Sudden Enlightenment' means precisely the immediate apperception of all that in fact we are. 'Enlightenment' is 'sudden' only because it is not in 'time' (subject to sequential duration). It is reintegration in intemporality." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first." - Wendell Berry

"For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land." - Wendell Berry

"I can no longer forget that loss and illness and trouble, however a person may exploit them, cannot be exploited without being suffered." - Wendell Berry

"I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand." - Wendell Berry

"In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known." - 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

"It is possible, I think, to say that... agriculture formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill." - Wendell Berry

"No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to spiritual subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences." - Wendell Berry

"The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain." - Wendell Berry

"Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death." - Wendell Berry

"At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Learn from your dreams what you lack." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Illness comes from living too small a process or too large a process." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"You, too, can determine what you want. You can decide on your major objectives, targets, aims and destination." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone

"The equality in political, industrial and social life which modern men must have in order to live, is not to be confounded with sameness. On the contrary, in our case, it is rather insistence upon the right of diversity; - upon the right of a human being to be a man even if he does not wear the same cut of vest, the same curl of hair or the same color of skin. Human equality does not even entail, as it is sometimes said, absolute equality of opportunity; for certainly the natural inequalities of inherent genius and varying gifts make this a dubious phrase. But there is more and more clearly recognized minimum of opportunity and maximum of freedom to be, to move and to think, which the modern world denies to no being which it recognizes as a real man." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?" - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"It is, indeed, marvelous that science should ever have revived amid the fearful obstacles theologians cast in her way. Together with a system of biblical interpretation so stringent, and at the same time so capricious, that it infallibly came into collision with every discovery that was not in accordance with the unaided judgments of the senses, and therefore with the familiar expressions of the Jewish writers, everything was done to cultivate a habit of thought the direct opposite of the habits of science. The constant exaltation of blind faith, the countless miracles, the childish legends, all produced a condition of besotted ignorance, of groveling and trembling credulity, that can scarcely be paralleled except among the most degraded barbarians. Innovation of every kind was regarded as a crime; superior knowledge excited only terror and suspicion. If it was shown in speculation, it was called heresy. If it was shown in the study of nature, it was called magic. The dignity of the Popedom was unable to save Gerbert from the reputation of a magician, and the magnificent labors of Roger Bacon were repaid by fourteen years of imprisonment, and many others of less severe but unremitting persecution. Added to all this, the overwhelming importance attached to theology diverted to it all those intellects which in another condition of society would have been employed in the investigations of science. When Lord Bacon was drawing his great chart of the field of knowledge, his attention was forcibly drawn to the torpor of the middle ages. That the mind of man should so long have remained tranced and numbed, seemed, at first sight, an objection to his theories, a contradiction to his high estimate of human faculties. But his answer was prompt and decisive. A theological system had lain like an incubus upon Christendom, and to its influence, more than to any other single cause, the universal paralysis is to be ascribed." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best." - W. Macneile Dixon, fully William Macneile Dixon

"It is quite natural that if a child of limited intelligence can only do one subject, that subject should be arithmetic. The judgments involved in thinking, "Is this the right block? No, that one's too long," and later associating the various blocks with 0, 1, 2, ...., and 9 are much simpler than those required to learn the 26 letters of the alphabet and the eccentricities of English and American spelling." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"An organism exists in its environment in only one mode, that of an open system responding to those segments of its environment to which it is genetically programmed to respond or to which it has learned to respond. But a self must be placed in a world. It cannot not be placed. If it chooses by default not to be placed, then its placement is that of not choosing to be placed." - Walker Percy

"How strange to think that you cannot pass along the discovery." - Walker Percy

"The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to." - Walker Percy

"What Descartes did not know: no such isolated individual as he described can be conscious." - Walker Percy

"Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin