Great Throughts Treasury

"Since the affairs of men rest still incertain, let's reason with the worst that may befall." - William Shakespeare

"So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed -- wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness and to teach others how they should prepare." - William Shakespeare

"So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom." - William Shakespeare

"Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair; and at their heels, a huge infectious troop of pale distemperatures and foes to life." - William Shakespeare

"A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"A woman's place is in the kitchen...sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Has become my thoughts more like neighbors veterans, annoying, but they have become dear, there is room for all of us in this neighborhood." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine—just imagine!—what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"It's just your ego, which seeks to retain power. Holds and the feeling of ambivalence, trying to convince you that you are deficient, disturbed and lonely rather than complete. If you keep the spiritual path, your ego will soon be out of business, and all decisions will make your heart. Replied attention. Instead of trying to force izgurnuti thoughts from his mind, give him something healthier, which can be played. For example, love." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"People think a soul mate is the one that fits them perfectly, and we all want. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that hinders and the person that your attention is directed to you, that could change your life. Probably the most important person you'll ever meet, but live forever with soulmate? No. Too painful. Soulmate in your life comes to you revealing a layer you, and then leave. And thank God for that." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your inner contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Richard didn't even have time to ask if I thought I'd ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, I already have, mister." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"When the dust has settled years later, we might ask ourselves, What was I thinking? and the answer is usually: You weren’t. Psychologists call that state of deluded madness narcissistic love. I call it my twenties." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Your tears are my prayers." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Are you becoming more and more aware of the interconnection of all beings, creatures and elements? Do you hold as your own Jesus' words: 'And whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me'? Are you getting tired of the way our society celebrates the false ego's selfish and insatiable drive to acquire and use more and more? And does that make you want to be an agent of healing? A declaration of life's interdependence is a sign of spiritual progress." - Elizabeth Lesser

"Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life." - Elizabeth Lesser

"And tulips, children love to stretch their fingers down, to feel in each its beauty's sweet nearer." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Earth may embitter, not remove, the love divinely given; and e'en that mortal grief shall prove the immortality of love, and lead us nearer heaven." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love's sake only. Do not say I love her for her smile —her look —her way of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought that falls in well with mine, and certes brought a sense of pleasant ease on such a day - For these things in themselves, Beloved, may be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, may be unwrought so. Neither love me for thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,— a creature might forget to weep, who bore thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The face, which, duly as the sun, rose up for me with life begun, to mark all bright hours of the day with hourly love, is dimmed away — and yet my days go on, go on." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"The heart which, like a staff, was one for mine to lean and rest upon, the strongest on the longest day with steadfast love, is caught away, and yet my days go on, go on. And cold before my summer's done, and deaf in Nature's general tune, and fallen too low for special fear, and here, with hope no longer here, while the tears drop, my days go on." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Whatever's lost, it first was won; we will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, that Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Yet how proud we are, in daring to look down upon ourselves!" - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him." - Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

"All the past is not worth one today." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other, that passionate Love is Pain's own mother." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Unless our souls had root in soil divine we could not bear earth's overwhelming strife. The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine, convinces me of everlasting life." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves." - Dorothy Parker

"If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence." - Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

"Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death." - Emil Nolde

"Getting up in the middle of the night, I walked around my room with the certainty of being chosen and criminal, a double privilege natural to the sleepless, revolting or incomprehensible for the captives of daytime logic." - Emil M. Cioran

"These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here." - Emile Zola

"The soul should always stand ajar, that if the heaven inquire, he will not be obliged to wait, or shy of troubling her. Depart, before the host has slid the bolt upon the door, to seek for the accomplished guest, -- her visitor no more." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"The spirit looks upon the Dust that fastened it so long with indignation, as a Bird defrauded of its Song." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, so sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; and, deepening still the dreamlike charm, wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"Although he loved her with all the strength of his miserable being, not love as much in eighty years as I do in a day" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, how could I seek the empty world again?" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"I will walk where my own nature would be leading." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"If he were in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that became my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him... Never would have missed her company, while she wanted. At the moment the affection disappeared, I would have ripped the heart and drank his blood. But until then... would have let me die in pieces before touching a hair on his head." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell