Great Throughts Treasury

"He had been married and had had offspring. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them the way he might have lost his handkerchief." - Victor Hugo

"I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." - Victor Hugo

"In certain vast enterprises when the superhuman seems necessary, bravery is little less than madness." - Victor Hugo

"It seems that a certain power of achievement is given to man. He appropriates creation to human needs. Such is his function. He has the audacity necessary to accomplish it; one might also say the impiety.... Man, this short-lived being, this creature always surrounded by death, undertakes the infinite.... He has his idea of fitness; the universe must accept it. Besides, has he not a universe of his own? He expects to make of it what seems to him good. A universe is raw material. The world, work of God, is man's canvas. Everything restrains man, but nothing stops him. He overcomes limits by jumping over them. The impossible is a perpetually receding frontier.... Formerly he took all this trouble for Xerxes; today, less foolish, he takes the trouble for himself. This diminution of stupidity is called progress." - Victor Hugo

"Love! Is a be two then we are not only one. A man and a woman melting together in an angel, it's heaven" - Victor Hugo

"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

"One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other." - Victor Hugo

"One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas." - Victor Hugo

"Popularity is glory in penny-pieces." - Victor Hugo

"She gave anyone who saw her a sensation of April and of dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Cosette was a condensation of auroral light in womanly form." - Victor Hugo

"Should we continue to look upwards Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds. (Les Miserables)" - Victor Hugo

"That a cat may change into a lion, prefects of police do not believe possible; this can happen, nonetheless." - Victor Hugo

"The stars were glittering in the heaven's dusk meadows, Far west, among those flowers of the shadows, The thin, clear crescent lustrous over her, Made Ruth raise question, looking through the bars Of heaven, with eyes half-oped, what God, what comer Unto the harvest of the eternal summer, Had flung his golden hook down on the field of stars." - Victor Hugo

"The suicide of the soul is evil thought." - Victor Hugo

"The sunshine was enchanting: the branches of the trees had that gentle tremor of May that seems to come from the birds' nests more than from the wind. A hardy little bird, probably in love, was desperately singing away in a tall tree." - Victor Hugo

"There are axioms in probity, in honesty, in justice, just as much as there are axioms in geometry; and the truths of morality are no more at the mercy of a vote than are the truths of algebra." - Victor Hugo

"There are ways of falling into error while pursuing the truth." - Victor Hugo

"This uninspired play on words had the effect of a stone thrown into a country pond...All the frogs fell silent." - Victor Hugo

"Virtue has a veil, vice a mask." - Victor Hugo

"Whosoever we may be, we are adventurers of the world of our thoughts." - Victor Hugo

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"He, whose friend is great, is himself great." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"His honor is acknowledged, and he bears the True Insignia; the Lord Himself issues His Royal Command." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"We should imbibe this unique quality of the sun and enhance one's internal energies." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices... Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals." - Václav Havel

"The easement lowers men until they make love." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"The mind does not need to know." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"If the whole world's our home where we may run, up, friends, forsake those secondary schools which give grains, units, inches for the whole! If facts surpass mere words, melt pride of soul, And pain, and ignorance that hardens fools, here in the fire I've stolen from the Sun!" - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"A full pistol scares one person, an empty one scares forty people." - Turkish Proverbs

"I found today, I will eat today. Tomorrow ? Well, God is great." - Turkish Proverbs

"But O how slick and weasel-like is self-pride! Our learnedness creeps into our sermons with a clever quotation which adds nothing to God's glory, but a bit to our own. Our cleverness in business competition earns as much self-flattery as does the possession of the money itself. Our desire to be known and approved by others, to have heads nod approvingly about us behind our backs, and flattering murmurs which we can occasionally overhear, confirm the discernment in Alfred Adler's elevation of the superiority motive. Our status as "weighty Friends" gives us secret pleasures which we scarcely own to ourselves, yet thrive upon. Yes, even pride in our own humility is one of the devil's own tricks. But humility rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and Power. But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our own little selves! And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted! But the blinding God blots out this self and gives humility and true self-hood as wholly full of Him. For as He gives obedience so He graciously gives to us what measure of humility we will accept. Even that is not our own, but His who also gives us obedience. But the humility of the God-blinded soul endures only so long as we look steadily at the Sun. Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble. The last depths of holy and voluntary poverty are not in financial poverty, important as that is; they are in poverty of spirit, in meekness and lowliness of soul." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"But self-renunciation means God-possession, the being possessed by God. Out of utter humility and self-forgetfulness comes the thunder of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." High station and low are leveled before Him. Be not fooled by the world's power. Imposing institutions of war and imperialism and greed are wholly vulnerable for they, and we, are forever in the hands of a conquering God. These are not cheap and hasty words. The high and noble adventures of faith can in our truest moments be seen as no adventures at all, but certainties. And if we live in complete humility in God we can smile in patient assurance as we work. Will you be wise enough and humble enough to be little fools of God? For who can finally stay His power? Who can resist His persuading love? Truly says Saint Augustine, "There is something in humility which raiseth the heart upward."" - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"Explore the depths of humility, not with your intellects but with your lives, lived in prayer of humble obedience. And there you will find that humility is not merely a human virtue. For there is a humility that is in God Himself. Be ye humble as God is humble. For love and humility walk hand in hand, in God as well as in man. But there is something about deepest humility which makes men bold. For utter obedience is self-forgetful obedience. No longer do we hesitate and shuffle and apologize because, say we, we are weak, lowly creatures and the world is a pack of snarling wolves among whom we are sent as sheep by the Shepherd. I must confess that, on human judgment, the world tasks we face are appalling—well-nigh hopeless. Only the inner vision of God, only the God-blindedness of unreservedly dedicated souls, only the utterly humble ones can bow and break the raging pride of a power-mad world." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the glory of God." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity of the children of God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It is the naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busy-ness for the Kingdom of God—yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the soul's growth! The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men's problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. Like the mercy of Shakespeare, "'tis mightiest in the mightiest." But it binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration of Him who is all in all." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"LSD is a drug that causes insanity in people who have not taken it." - Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

"The sublime rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid." - Hugh Blair

"He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Night, when tangos play on the nurse's radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sedan cruises the pleasure districts, when neon flickers Free at Last in a dozen lost languages, and shapes left over from childhood move furtively behind the moon-dizzy boughs of the fir." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"All is not offence that indiscretion finds, and dotage terms so." - William Shakespeare