Great Throughts Treasury

"One must read poetry with one's nerves." - Wallace Stevens

"To say more than human things with human voice that cannot be; to say human things with more than human voice, that, also, cannot be; to speak humanly from the height or from the depth of human things, that is acutest speech." - Wallace Stevens

"A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organization of comprehensive political exposure." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"A full 'definition of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Among the masses of the people, we (the communists) are but drops in the ocean, and we will be able to govern only when we properly express that which the people appreciate. Without this the communist party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not take the lead of the masses, and the whole machine will fall to pieces." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"At all costs we must break the old, absurd, savage, despicable and disgusting prejudice that only the so-called upper classes, only the rich, and those who have gone through the school of the rich, are capable of administering the state and directing the organizational development of socialist society." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be “just” “defensive” wars, irrespective of who attacked first; and every Socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory “great” powers." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Philosophical idealism is only nonsense from the standpoint of crude, simple, metaphysical materialism. From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, on the other hand, philosophical idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated, development (inflation, distension) of one of the features, aspects, facets of knowledge, into an absolute, divorced from matter, from nature, apotheosized." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"We have invited and continue to invite the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to share power with us." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"What a splendid thing watercolor is to express atmosphere and distance, so that the figure is surrounded by air and can breathe in it" - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in the intensifying viciousness." - Victor Hugo

"We should make efforts to acquire right knowledge and refrain from violence." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"I shall never be as old as I was between 20 and 30." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"Sometimes a lengthened period of prosperity melts away in a moment; just as the heat of summer flies before a day of tempest." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"If you don't develop Dharma-selecting vision--the genuine wisdom to distinguish between the Dharma and what is not the Dharma--you will have studied the Dharma in vain." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"So those landscape architects, financial planners, home designers, and real estate brokers who get it, who become skilled at working to build, customize, and interpret models, will also find themselves with a pathway to the new middle." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"Being considered or labeled mentally disordered – abnormal, crazy, mad, psychotic, sick, it matters not what variant is used – is the most profoundly discrediting classification that can be imposed on a person today. Mental illness casts the “patient” out of our social order just as surely as heresy cast the “witch” out of medieval society. That, indeed, is the very purpose of stigma terms." - Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

"I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal" - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen, the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness." - Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

"You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die." - Cicely Saunders, fully Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders

"I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding." - William Godwin

"I know, indeed, of nothing more subtle satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from a fine physical state. It cannot be bought. But it is the keenest joy, after all and the toiler's truest and best reward." - William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters

"That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it." - William James

"We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another." - William Law

"There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature, but, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

"Even the worse of jobs has their pleasures, if I were a grave digger or a hangmen, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment." - Douglas William Jerrold

"The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Instruments are of thirteen varieties; they function by grasping, sustaining and disclosing. Their objects are tenfold, to be grasped, sustained and disclosed." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"The instruments perform their respective functions, prompted by mutual sympathy. The purpose of the Self (purusha) is the sole cause; by nothing else is any instrument activated." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!" - Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

"When one peels away dark clouds, one exposes the sun; as a result, the ten thousand things cannot hide their shapes." - Ge Hong, courtesy name Zhichuan, aka Gě Hóng and Ko Hung

"You will not mind if I say that where there is unhappiness in a house and there is an impression of someone [i.e. a departed spirit] coming back, it is because you make for that spirit a Garden of Memory in which it can live and revive its sufferings. Unless you are, consciously or unconsciously, in a state of mind in which this impression can vivify itself, you will not be troubled. Haven't you discovered that these things only happen to you when you are in a bad emotional state, physically or mentally disturbed? Don't you realize that you yourself vivify this memory?" - Eileen Garrett

"War comes today as the result of one of three causes: either actual or threatened wrong by one country to another, or suspicion by one country that another intends to do it wrong ... or, from bitterness of feeling, dependent in no degree whatever upon substantial questions of difference. . . . The least of these three causes of war is actual injustice." - Elihu Root

"For you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let’s enjoy this time. It’s marvelous." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But both are equally true." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"If the object of government is to protect the weak against the strong, how unwise to place the power wholly in the hands of the strong." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"I write about different things than other columnists. But I do it out of a sense of news judgment. The major stories today are the family and what I call life-and-death issues." - Ellen Goodman

"The people often slandered as greedy geezers seem to have a perspective from their place in history. The elders in my family remember the Depression. The baby boomers remember dot-com boom and bust. We all have albums of best laid plans." - Ellen Goodman

"Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"If our fellow men could be aware of our opinions about them, love, friendship, and devotion would be forever erased from the dictionaries; and if we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame." - Emil M. Cioran

"And wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell