Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Rest

"Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant." - Edmund Burke

"The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love, laughter, and work." - Elbert Green Hubbard

"Most men are in a coma when they are at rest and made when they act." - Epicurus NULL

"A feeling of utter worthlessness levels a man's attitude toward his fellow beings. He views the whole of humanity as being of one kind. He will despise equally those who love him and those who hate him, those who are noble and those who are mean, those who are compassionate and those who are cruel. It is as if the feeling of worthlessness cuts one off from the rest of mankind. One sees humanity as a foreign species." - Eric Hoffer

"It is not true that the relations between the sexes are of the same order with the rest of man’s instincts. They have social consequences which place them in a class apart." - Ernest Dimnet

"Real education must ultimately be limited to one who insists on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"The artist is simply the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world." - Federico Fellini

"I cannot call riches by a better name than the "baggage" of virtue; the Roman word is better, "impediment." For as the baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, and yet it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit." - Francis Bacon

"When the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further. But when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must fly to Providence and Deity." - Francis Bacon

"Beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality, art, patriotism, bravery and the rest… are mere words, useful for duping barbarians into adopting civilization, or the civilized poor into submitting to be robbed and enslaved. This is the family secret of the governing class." - George Bernard Shaw

"The period of time covered by history is far too short to allow any perceptible progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The notion that there has been any such Progress since Caesar’s time (less than 20th centuries ago) is too absurd for discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as existing in the past exists at the present moment." - George Bernard Shaw

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." -

"Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest on circumstantial evidence." - George Santayana

"Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life." - George Santayana

"The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure." - Grayson Kirk, fully Grayson Louis Kirk

"To will what God wills is the only science that gives us rest." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight - the hour of love - the hour of adoration - the hour of rest - when we think of those we love, only to regret that we have not loved them more dearly; when we remember our enemies only to forgive them." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"All are architects of fate, working in these walls of Time; some with massive deed and great, some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; each thing in its place is best; and what seems idle show strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, time is with materials filled; our todays and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; leaving no yawning gaps between; think not, because no man sees, such things will remain unseen." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"All things are in motion and nothing is at rest… You cannot go into the same [river] twice." - Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL

"Too much rest itself becomes a pain." - Homer NULL

"Better a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life." - Irish Proverbs

"Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation! Adults have invested endless hours of learning in growing accustomed to inches and miles; to February’s twenty-eight days; to “night” and “debt” with their silent letters; to qwertyuiop; and to all the rest. To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn." - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov

"The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing, but that it is the external sign of an internal deficiency." - James Bryant Conant

"My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial, beautifully coordinated, and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on." -

"Man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim; man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to “motivate” children into learning, by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and the classroom; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest." - John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt

"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world." - John Muir

"Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition." - John Ruskin

"The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn, but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend." - John Ruskin

"There's no music in "rest," but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life melody, always talking of perseverance and courage and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too." - John Ruskin

"Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest." - John Stuart Mill

"The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner

"To live is to feel ourselves fatally obliged to exercise our liberty, to decide what we are going to be in this world. Not for a single moment is our activity of decision allowed to rest. Even when in desperation we abandon ourselves to whatever may happen, we have decided not to decide." - José Ortega y Gasset

"There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life." - Joseph Addison

"For 3,500 years, Jews have been telling themselves, their children, and the rest of the world: Be good. Be kind. Be honest. Be ethical. Be moral. It is the most revolutionary message in human history." - Joseph Jacobs

"Love joins our present with the past and the future... Love is a divine knowledge that enables men to see as much as the gods... Love is a blinding mist that keeps the soul from discerning the secret of existence, so that the heart sees only trembling phantoms of desire among the hills, and hears only echoes of cries from voiceless valleys... Love is the rest of the body in the quiet of the grave, the tranquillity of the soul in the depth of Eternity... And so, all who passed spoke of Love as the image of their hopes and frustrations, leaving it a mystery as before." - Kahlil Gibran

"History is the display of the supposed advantages of power and intelligence which some men possess over others, of the struggle for existence hypocritically described by ideologists as the struggle for justice and freedom, of the ebb and flow of old and new forms of human righteousness, each vying with the rest in the solemnity and triviality... Yet one drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite things." - Karl Barth

"Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired." - Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter

"All plants, animals, and men are already in eternity, traveling across the face of time. Whence we know not. Whither, who is able to say? Let us have one world at a time, and let us make the journey one of joy to our fellow passengers, and just as convenient and happy for them as we can, and trust the rest as we trust life." - Luther Burbank

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -

"Plan for the future because that's where you are going to spend the rest of your life." -

"The convivium is rest from labours, release from cares and nourishment of genius; it is the demonstration of love and splendour, the food of good will, the seasoning of friendship, the leavening of grace and the solace of life... Everything should be seasoned with the salt of genius and illumined by the rays of mind and manners." - Marsilio Ficino

"Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they; to God’s word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else." - Martin Luther

"The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry." - Matthew Arnold

"Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

"I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended." - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

"When you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." - Nora Ephron

"In life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life losses its meaning when the building stops... Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure." -

"Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible. " - Pearl Bailey, fully Pearl Mae Bailey

"Reality is not motion and rest ‘both at once’, but something distinct from them." - Plato NULL

"Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."" - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL