Great Throughts Treasury

"I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The people we are most fond of are not good for us when we are ill." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand sensual things." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"The only thing I need is freedom from myself." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"The ring of truth is inside every man. And this is not something merely metaphysical or philosophical. It is a practical fact. If a man learns to listen, if he refuses to be lured away by false sounds, he will find his way home. The ring of truth will always be recognized by the man who listens. And every man has the capacity to listen and follow." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"I have borne the musket of a soldier, the traveler’s cane, and the pilgrim’s staff: as a sailor my fate has been as inconstant as the wind: a kingfisher, I have made my nest among the waves. I have been party to peace and war: I have signed treaties, protocols, and along the way published numerous works. I have been made privy to party secrets, of court and state: I have viewed closely the rarest disasters, the greatest good fortune, the highest reputations. I have been present at sieges, congresses, conclaves, at the restoration and demolition of thrones. I have made history, and been able to write it. ... Within and alongside my age, perhaps without wishing or seeking to, I have exerted upon it a triple influence, religious, political and literary." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

"Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

"Become like someone dying in the snow, I find pleasure in approaching last sleep" - Victor Hugo

"Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them." - Victor Hugo

"Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization." - Victor Hugo

"Wisdom is a sacred communion." - Victor Hugo

"As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logotherapy? he asked. At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy? Yes, I said, but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is? This was his answer: During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell. Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The reaction is normal about the abnormal position is a response together" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"Ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man... What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The Siblings of Destiny meet together, and eat and spend, but these resources do not diminish; they continue to increase." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"There is only one Caste; the Caste of Humanity.There is only one Language; the Language of the Heart." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"This ocean too is vast and full of mystery; it has its unplumbed depths. It tosses man about from birth to death and again from death to birth." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"I have had direct experience of this myself. Often, what the press wrote, or did not write, about a remark I made somewhere proved to be of a far greater consequence than the remark itself. Democratic choice in such cases ceases to be a choice between alternatives people are familiar with, and have personally tried, and becomes a choice between alternatives offered by those who run the media." - Václav Havel

"The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul." - Václav Havel

"Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed." - Václav Havel

"Give these people money, let them play, and they'll come up with something." - Vannevar Bush

"The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more." - Vannevar Bush

"Anything that flatters our vanity more is only based on the culture that we despise." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Awareness of dying slander their lives." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"It belongs only to adjust the courage to life." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"It is proof of a narrow mind when things worthy of esteem are distinguished from things worthy of love. Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"The reason she blushed tendencies cannot account for." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"The reason that philosophers and glory makes heroes, the only virtue is wise." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Those who are not able to please women get corrected." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"They use baths, and moreover they have warm ones according to the Roman custom, and they make use also of olive oil. They have found out, too, a great many secret cures for the preservation of cleanliness and health. And in other ways they labor to cure the epilepsy, with which they are often troubled." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"The spirits and immortals of old had no special tricks; they were simply happy as could be, and they never worried." This should be the motto of all cultivators." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now--to quote myself at my most pretentious--is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called "adult" language. Irreverence is easy--what's hard is wit." - Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

"It was a beautiful and striking reply, given by one in affliction, who, when asked how it was that he bore it so well, replied, - "It lightens the stroke, I find, to draw near to Him who handles the rod."" - Tryon Edwards

"Preventives of evil are far better than remedies; cheaper and easier of application, and surer in result" - Tryon Edwards

"Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive." - Tryon Edwards

"The laws of nature are but the thoughts and agencies of God - the modes in which he works and carries out the designs of his providence and will." - Tryon Edwards

"The religion of the gospel has power, immense power, over mankind; direct and indirect, positive and negative, restraining and aggressive. Civilization, law, order, morality, the family, all that elevates woman, or blesses society, or gives peace to the nations, all these are the fruits of Christianity, the full power of which, even for this world, could never be appreciated till it should be taken away." - Tryon Edwards