Great Throughts Treasury

"Providence expects that we should make this world our own, and not live in it as though it were a rented tenement. We can only make it our own through some service, and that service is to lend it love and beauty from our soul." -

"The best of us still have our aspirations for the supreme goals of life, which is so often mocked by prosperous people who now control the world. We still believe that the world has a deeper meaning than what is apparent, and that therein the human soul finds its ultimate harmony and peace. We still know that only in spiritual wealth does civilization attain its end, not in a prolific production of materials, and not in the competition of intemperate power with power." -

"The pious sectarian is proud because he is confident of his right of possession in God. The man of devotion is meek because he is conscious of God’s right of love over his life and soul. The object of our possession becomes smaller than ourselves, and without acknowledging it in so many words the bigoted sectarian has an implicit belief that God can be kept secured for certain individuals in a cage which is of their own make. In a similar manner the primitive races of men believe that their ceremonials have a magic influence upon their deities." -

"The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil., impetuously rushing towards an unending aimlessness." -

"To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own, and it is the discovery of ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfills its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite." -

"When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we find our centre in our soul by the power of self-restraint, by the force that harmonises all warring elements and unifies those that are apart, then all our isolated impressions reduce themselves to wisdom, and all our momentary impulses of heart find their completion in love; then all the petty details of our life reveal an infinite purpose, and all our thoughts and deeds unite themselves inseparably in an internal harmony." -

"Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body, or the root to the tree." - Jeremy Taylor

"Temperance is reason’s girdle and passions’ bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue." - Jeremy Taylor

"Lust... is a short pleasure, bought with long pains, a honeyed poison, a gulf of shame... the body's bane and the soul's perdition." - John Taylor, aka 'Water Poet'

"Life is the soul’s nursery." - William Makepeace Thackeray

"To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me." - William Makepeace Thackeray

"In waking whispers and repeated dreams, to hint pure thoughts and warn the favored soul." - Edward Thomson

"Vain man would trace the mystic maze with foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God, his balance hold, and guide his angry rod, new-mould the spheres, and mend the skies’ design, and sound th’ immense with his short scanty line. Do thou, my soul, the destined period wait, when God shall solve the dark decrees of fate, His now unequal dispensation clear, and make all wise and beautiful appear." - Thomas Tickell

"Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find the causes is implanted in man's soul." -

"When loving the human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul." -

"Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul..." - Horace Traubel

"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest wisdom within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth." - Henry Theodore Tuckerman

"This deity who is manifesting himself in the activities of the universe always dwells in the heart of man as the supreme soul. Those who realise him through the immediate perception of the heart attain immortality." -

"Strange and hard that paradox true I give, objects gross and the unseen soul are one." - Vaga Saneyi Samhita Upanishad

"To have taste it is necessary to have soul." -

"The charm of the deed is its doing; the charm of a life is its living; the soul of the thing is the thought." - Eugene Ware, aka "Ironquill", fully Captain Eugene Fitch Ware

"It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness." - Francis Wayland

"Every human being has four hungers; the hunger of the loins, the hunger of the belly, the hunger of the mind, the hunger of the soul. You can get by a long time on the loins and the belly, but there is a good deal of evidence that even the meanest men eventually crave something for the mind and soul." - James Webb

"The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still." - John P. Webster

"Get all you can without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can. Be glad to give, and ready to distribute; laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that you may attain eternal life." - Edward Noyes Westcott

"A man really looking onward to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an ennobled attitude." - William Whewell

"There seem to be some persons, the favorites of fortune and darlings of nature, who are born cheerful. “A star danced” at their birth. It is no superficial visibility, but a bountiful and beneficent soul that sparkles in their eyes and smiles on their lips. Their inborn geniality amounts to genius, the rare and difficult genius which creates sweet and wholesome character, and radiates cheer." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"Faith is the antiseptic of the soul." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars, grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, but grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, lighting the slight, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (what were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far - more lasting thou than they." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensures, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Whatever satisfies souls is true; prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls, itself only finally satisfies the soul, the soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible of proof, it is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the flot of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Wisdom is of the soul; cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Complete happiness will not come to one’s soul through gratifying physical desires. The only way to achieve perfect happiness is to find spiritual fulfillment which leads to being satisfied with one’s material situation." - Hillel Witkind

"Self-inspection - the best cure for self-esteem... By all means sometimes be alone; salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear; dare to look in thy chest, and tumble up and down what thou findest there." - William Wordsworth

"Faith is the marriage of God and the Soul." -

"The soul of one who serves God always swims in joy, always keeps a holiday, is always in her palace of jubilation, ever singing with fresh ardor and fresh pleasure a new song of joy and love." -

"The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord is broken, the bird cannot fly. so the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God." -

"Oh! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, lost to the noble sallies of the soul, who think it solitude to be alone." -

"Encouragement is oxygen to the soul. Good work can never be expected from a worker without encouragement. No one ever climbed spiritual heights without it. No one ever lived without it." - George Matthew Adams

"When is a prayer heard? When the soul is subdued." - Yehuda Alharizi, also Judah ben Solomon Harizi or al-Harizi

"The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection." -

"The whole secret of remaining young in spite of years, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in oneself, by poetry, by contemplation, by charity, - that is, in fewer words, the maintenance of harmony in the soul. When everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in its right place within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work of God. Deep and grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and the eternal order, reason touched with emotion and a serene tenderness of heart - these surely are the foundations of wisdom." -

"To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song." -

"My soul is God, my soul is eternity." - Ani NULL

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Glorify your soul in humility." - Apocrypha NULL