Great Throughts Treasury

"Hope has been the sole companion of my life, the greatest aid in doubts, the strongest assistance in my weakness; hope, but not the hope in men, such as is thought to bring greater happiness and instead brings greater disaster, but hope in Christ, supported by the celestial promise that He will strengthen the weakest of men with a greatness of soul and divine help." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL

"At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a freeman means at least this much, then the 13th Amendment made a promise it cannot keep." - Potter Stewart

"Parenthood has the power to redefine every aspect of life - marriage, work, relationships with family and friends. Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves- who we are, who we are not, who we wish we could be. " - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semi religious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed. Despite this knowledge, statesmen in responsible positions on both sides continue to employ the well-known technique of seeking to intimidate and demoralize the opponent by marshaling superior military strength. They do so even though such a policy entails the risk of war and doom. Not one statesman in a position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise of peace, the course of supranational security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into flame, exact their victims… [These were his last words]" - Albert Einstein

"To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"Never promise more than you can perform." - Publius Syrus

"I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all." - Ralph Barton Perry

"Today is a time of turbulence and stagnation, of threat and promise from a competitor: the magic, omnivorous videocassette recorder (VCR). In other words, it is business as usual." - Richard Corliss, fully Richard Nelson Corliss

"There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them." - Richard Dawkins

"From this day forward, let each of us make a solemn commitment in his own heart: to bear his responsibility, to do his part, to live his ideals--so that together, we can see the dawn of a new age of progress for America, and together, as we celebrate our 200th anniversary as a nation, we can do so proud in the fulfillment of our promise to ourselves and to the world." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Whoever you may be, I caution you against rashly defaming the author of this work, or cavilling in jest against him. Nay, do not silently reproach him in consequence of others' censure, nor employ your wit in foolish disapproval or false accusation. For, should Democritus Junior prove to be what he professes, even a kinsman of his elder namesake, or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all up with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in his petulant spleen, will dissipate you in jest, pulverize you with witticisms, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth." - Robert Burton

"A promise made is a debt unpaid." - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service

"Open the gate, my love, Arise and open the gate, For my soul is dismayed And sorely afraid And Hagar’s brood mocks my estate. The heart of the hand-maid’s sons Is hateful and haughty grown, And all because of the cry Of Ishmael piercing the sky, Ascending and reaching the Throne. I stumble ’twixt beast and beast, The wild ass swift to slay Has followed my flight From the courts of Night Where crushed of the boar I lay. Alas! for my thick-sealed fate, Ah woe for the days to come! It helps but to pain me That none can explain me, And I, myself, I am dumb." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Because poetry is the language of felt thought and utterance… of admissions and oaths as sacred as life itself, it is evident in an economy by its absence. As long as people are perceived in economic terms alone, poetry (and all the other arts, for that matter) will be regarded as ornamental or irrelevant or simply dispensable… the disregard of poetry will be as fatal to their spiritual lives as the deprivation of oxygen would be to their physical lives. Why? Because poetry tells us who we are, what our surroundings mean to us, and what waits to be discovered beneath the apparent.…It is the language of the heart…It is at the same time the language of the senses." - Samuel J. Hazo, fully Samuel John Hazo

"On the boundless plain careering By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, — With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing In every step a grand pride showing, Of no servile moment knowing, — Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours, Happier in fuller powers, — See the wild herd nobly ranging, Nature varying, not changing, Lawful in their lawless ranging. Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed? Whisper only, speak not loud, Mark and leave him in the crowd. Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have; The free will serve thee like the slave, Coward shrinking from the brave." - Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli

"The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg

"He is very sorry that such undesirable things are every now and then cropping up in … and discouraging you in your work, keeping you from devoting all your spare time in teaching the Cause, and spreading its principles. He does not wish you, however, to lose heart from such things. As the Cause grows its difficulties will increase and its problems will become more numerous. The friends, especially the older ones, should therefore try and stand unmoved by them. In fact the more their difficulties will increase the more they have to take courage and try to solve them. The Master has often said that sorrows are like furrows, the deeper they go the more productive the land becomes. If this problem. .. should be settled other problems will arise. Are the friends to become discouraged or are they to follow the footsteps of the Master and consider them more as chances to show their tenacity of belief and spirit of sacrifice?" - Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání

"Think not, Sultan, that in the sequestered vale alone dwells virtue, and her sweet companion, with attentive eye, mild, affable benevolence! No, the first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example." - James Ridley, fully James Kenneth Ridley, wrote under pen name Sir Charles Morell

"Trust the people -- that is the crucial lesson of history." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Because making progress on adaptive problems requires learning, the task of leadership consists of choreographing and directing learning processes in an organization or community." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth; Four things greater than all things are-- Women and Horses and Power and War." - Rudyard Kipling

"The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful doze, but we are older than those cities. We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again. That's how a young person turns toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans toward the breast, without knowing the secret of its desire, yet turning instinctively. Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"The Lord gave clear evidence of His supreme power in what He endured from hostile forces when He endowed human nature with an incorruptible form of generation. For through His passion He conferred dispassion, through suffering repose, and through death eternal life. By His privations in the flesh He re-established and renewed the human state, and by His own incarnation He bestowed on human nature the supra-natural grace of deification." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

"We follow the ways of wolves, the habits of tigers: or, rather we are worse than they. To them nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, while God has honored us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we are become worse than the wild beast." - John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

"Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles." - Samuel Smiles

"Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a necessary evil, it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil." - Sydney J. Harris

"I cannot face with comfort the idea of life without work; work and the free play of the imagination are for me the same thing, I take no pleasure in anything else." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism." - Stephan Jay Gould

"In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Why, then, have we been bamboozled into accepting the usual tale without questioning? I suspect two primary reasons: we love a sensible and satisfying story, and we are disinclined to challenge apparent authority (like textbooks!). But do remember that most satisfying tales are false." - Stephan Jay Gould

"When God hath sent a sharp disease, as a messenger to bind men to their beds and make an interruption of their sinful pleasures, their mouths are full of promises of a new life, in hope to escape the just vengeance of God: the sense of hell, which strikes strongly upon them, makes them full of such pretended resolutions when they howl upon their beds. But if God be pleased in his patience to give them a respite, to take off the chains wherewith he seemed to be binding them for destruction, and recruit their strength, they are more earnest in their sins than they were in their promises of a reformation, as if they had got the mastery of God, and had outwitted him." - Stephen Charnock

"When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God." - Stephen Charnock

"The secret of human happiness is not in self-seeking but in self-Forgetting." - Theodor Reik

"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down violence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. As things are now, such power to command peace throughout the world could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and on certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The Oligarch is one who, when the people are deliberating whom they shall associate with the archon as joint directors of the procession, will come forward and express his opinion that these directors ought to have plenary powers." - Theophrastus NULL

"I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries." - Thomas Carlyle

"A commonwealth is said to be instituted when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; every one, as well he that voted for it as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were his own, to the end to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men." - Thomas Hobbes

"Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own." - Thomas Jefferson

"The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituate the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or traveling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and fix them on the immutable essences of things." - Thomas Macaulay, fully Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

"A Song : On The Green Margin - On the green margin of the brook, Despairing Phyllida reclined, Whilst every sigh, and every look, Declared the anguish of her mind. Am I less lovely then? (she cries, And in the waves her form surveyed); Oh yes, I see my languid eyes, My faded cheek, my colour fled: These eyes no more like lightning pierced, These cheeks grew pale, when Damon first His Phyllida betrayed. The rose he in his bosom wore, How oft upon my breast was seen! And when I kissed the drooping flower, Behold, he cried, it blooms again! The wreaths that bound my braided hair, Himself next day was proud to wear At church, or on the green. While thus sad Phyllida lamented, Chance brought unlucky Thyrsis on; Unwillingly the nymph consented, But Damon first the cheat begun. She wiped the fallen tears away, Then sighed and blushed, as who would say Ah! Thyrsis, I am won. " - William Cowper

"Anybody whose pleasure is watching somebody else die is about as little use to humanity as the person being electrocuted." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Polo, racing and horse shows all are doing great work to help the farmer and rancher to raise better horses." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"The president says, 'There is lots of people worse off than the Farmers.' I don't know who it could be unless it is the fellow who holds the Mortgages on the Farms." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Upon surrendering with his rocket team to the Americans in 1945: We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." - Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

"A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger. In this case, the destruction or killing of the object is the biologically purposeful goal. The original motive is not pleasure in destruction. Rather the destruction serves the “life instinct”…and is an attempt to avoid anxiety and to preserve the ego in its totality. I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live." - Wilhelm Reich

"Everyone falls down. Getting back up is how you learn how to walk." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney