Great Throughts Treasury

"May we be worthy of the freedoms that have been provided us in our Constitution, and equal to the trials and tests that shall surely come. We truly have special and individual responsibilities to befriend and to defend that “glorious standard,” our Constitution." - Ezra Taft Benson

"One good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are?" - Ezra Taft Benson

"The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

"The great work facing humanity, he says, is to move from mindlessly extracting and consuming the earth's resources to establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with nature." -

"I think it's unfortunate and really reflects the mean-spirited nature of the anti-abortion movement that it is willing to sacrifice poor women in this debate as a means of making gains. Abortion is legal in this country and is not something that should be denied women, but anti-abortion advocates suggest that if they can't deny it to every woman, they will at least deny it to low-income women." - Faye Wattleton

"I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never - I've never - I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace." - Feisal Abdul Rauf

"'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim." - Feisal Abdul Rauf

"The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon." - Felix Adler

"We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason." - Felix Adler

"No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Penny and penny laid up will be many." - Italian Proverbs

"Two women and a goose make a market." - Italian Proverbs

"What is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh." - Italian Proverbs

"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs

"As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"A year shall I endure for every day that passes until you return." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit?may the hair on his toes never fall out!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien