Great Throughts Treasury

"For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day." - Walter Lippmann

"The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence." - Walter Lippmann

"In high technology cultures today, everyone lives each day in a frame of abstract computed time enforced by millions of printed calendars, clock, and watches. In twelfth-century England there were no clocks or watches or wall or desk calendars." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile." - Walter Chrysler, fully Walter Percy Chrysler

"To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle." - Walter Chrysler, fully Walter Percy Chrysler

"Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"Will you tell Him frankly, that you cannot carry your load, and that you need help? Will you suffer Him to help you in His own way, and be glad and thankful if He will only take you under His care, and direct the whole course of your life for you?" - Washington Gladden

"Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but they are starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it." - Washington Irving

"The snow, the wind, the sun and the sounds of nature, can all be reminders to you that you're an integral part of the natural world." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased with the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them." - Wendell Berry

"The Peace of Wild Things - When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." - Wendell Berry

"We are disposed, somewhat by culture and somewhat by nature, to solve our problems by violence, and even to enjoy doing so. And yet by now all of us must at least have suspected that our right to live, to be free, and to be at peace is not guaranteed by any act of violence. It can be guaranteed only by our willingness that all other persons should live, be free, and be at peace — and by our willingness to use or give our own lives to make that possible." - Wendell Berry

"We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and detterence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war." - Wendell Berry

"We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw." - Wendell Berry

"The true men of action in our time those who transform the world are not the politicians and statesmen but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons, and are therefore speechless. When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"The commonest complaint from the abler pupils is that if they finish a set of exercises ahead of the rest of the class they are simply given more of the same kind, which they find very boring." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, within whose burning bosom we devise our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly… Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers… Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires… Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires." - Wallace Stevens

"I measure myself against a tall tree. I find that I am much taller, for I reach right up to the sun, with my eye." - Wallace Stevens

"The reflection of her here, and then there, is another shadow, another evasion, another denial. If she is everywhere, she is nowhere, to him. But this she has made." - Wallace Stevens

"Darling, I thought of nothing mean; I thought of killing straight and clean. You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice, but tell me once before I cease, which does your Church esteem the kinder role, to kill the body or destroy the soul?" - Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

"But perhaps to the inexperienced it will seem a marvel that human nature can comprehend such a great number of studies and keep them in the memory. Still, the observation that all studies have a common bond of union and intercourse with one another, will lead to the belief that this can easily be realized. For a liberal education forms, as it were, a single body made up of these members. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"If our designs for private houses are to be correct, we must at the outset take note of the countries and climates in which they are built." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. For the arms thrust through those stretched strings must, on being let go, strike their blow together at the same." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Therefore it was the discovery of fire that originally gave rise to the coming together of men, to the deliberate assembly, and to social intercourse." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"We, however, at first followed the ancient number, and in the denarius fixed ten bronze coins; whence to this day the derived name keeps the number ten (denarius). And also because the fourth part was made up of two asses and a half, they called it sestertius. But afterwards they perceived that both numbers were perfect, both the six and the ten; and they threw both together, and made the most perfect number sixteen. Now of this they found the origin in the foot. For when two palms are taken from the cubit, there is left a foot of four palms, and the palm has four fingers. So it comes that the foot has sixteen fingers and the bronze denarius as many asses." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an American businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"She wants to go home, but nobodys home. That's why she lies, broken inside. With no place to go, no place to go, to dry her eyes, broken inside..." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"This, to use an American term in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"To a joke, then, I owe my first gleam of consciousness—which again has recapitulatory implications, since the first creatures on earth to become aware of time were also the first creatures to smile." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It was decided by the University of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Many historians take pleasure in putting into the mouths of princes what they have neither said nor ought to have said." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The passions are the winds that fill the sails of the vessel. - They sink it at times; but without them it would be impossible to make way. - Many things that are dangerous here below, are still necessary." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The United States is speaking out of both sides of its mouth," - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"What is not in nature can never be true." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"For great things do not done (sic) just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Indigo with terra sienna, Prussian blue with burnt sienna, really give much deeper tones than pure black itself. When I hear people say ‘there is no black in nature’, I sometimes think, ‘There is no real black in colors either’. However, you must beware of falling into the error of thinking that the colorists do not use black, for of course as soon as an element of blue, red, or yellow is mixed with black, it becomes a gray, namely, a dark, reddish, yellowish, or bluish gray." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she belonged to neither; and indeed, for the time being she seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses of each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her. She was a feather blown on the gale. Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged…." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf