Great Throughts Treasury

"In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms...the game of ball is glorious." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"It is native personality, and that alone, that endows a man to stand before presidents or generals, or in any distinguished collection, with aplomb -and not culture, or any intellect whatever." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial individual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the last dignity to human life." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Your true soul and body appear before me. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, none has understood you, but I understand you, none has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, none but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, none but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits instrinsically in yourself. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life, your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time. I pursue you where none else has pursued you. Conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me. I give nothing to anyone except I give the like carefully to you. These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, these furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"Stop your own blame trip as of right now." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Just look at the elated hype on the Nobel Prize by the Chinese government before and after the announcement. We could tell that this prize was awarded for the purpose of pleasing the communist regime and is thus not noteworthy." - Wei Jingsheng or Jing-sheng

"An angel abroad, and a devil at home." - Welsh Proverbs

"Better a wise lad than a foolish king." - Welsh Proverbs

"I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard." - Wendell Berry

"The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it." - Wendell Berry

"A person incapable of imaging another world than given to him by his senses would be subhuman, and a person who identifies his imaginary world with the world of sensory fact has become insane." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Acts of injustice done between the setting and the rising sun in history lie like bones, each one." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Noises at dawn will bring freedom for some, but not this peace. No bird can contradict." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Complete success would mean that every individual felt, "I enjoyed the mathematics that I had time to learn. If I ever need or want to learn some more, I shall not be afraid to do so."" - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible." - Wallace Stevens

"The heavy trees, the grunting, shuffling branches, the robust, the nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines deepen the feelings to inhuman depths." - Wallace Stevens

"It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity." - Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire

"How much, let me note, depends upon trousers; the intelligent head is entirely handicapped by shabby trousers." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Doing good to others is not a duty, it is a joy, for it increases our own health and happiness." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"Javert's ideal was not to be humane, not to be great, not to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable. Now he had just failed." - Victor Hugo

"I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.'" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"What matters is to make the best of any given situation. "The best," however, is that which in Latin is called optimum--hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for (l) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"During war times not only one should himself take part in it but also encourage the courageous to do so by creating awareness, zeal and enthusiasm for the war in the society." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"A vision without resources is an hallucination." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand" - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Okay, we have just passed through the Michener zone, and , assuming that narcolepsy hasn’t leadened our lids, that we’ve not been Lao-this’d and Lao-that’ed into a comatose state, we’re now in a position, as we rejoin the narrative flow, to conclude that Fan Nan Nan was a Lao Theung community. Are we not?" - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Of all creatures in this visible world, light is the most glorious; of all light, the light of the sun without compare excels the rest." - William Gurnall

"One that hath been a courtier, and says, if ladies be but young and fair, they have the gift to know it." - William Shakespeare

"In the same winter quarter, beginning in January, 1896, I taught a class for the Disciples Divinity House, in the divinity school of the university, on the theology of Alexander Campbell. This enabled me to work over again the relation of his thought to that of John Lock, which had so much interested me while I was working on my thesis the previous year. With a class of eight graduate students it was possible to have reports and discussions on various problems. Our excitement ran high, for the “discovery” of the relation between Campbell and Locke gave new meaning to Disciple history and placed it in a stream of thought that was influencing modern science and philosophy with what Locke himself called “a new way of ideas.” It was the empirical and pragmatic temper applied in religious matters. This meant not only a lessened emphasis upon traditional theology and speculative metaphysics but a refection of their assumptions and methods. Like Locke, Campbell also rejected the “inner light” and “enthusiasm” as grounds for religious assurance. Both held to the possibility of revelation, but both insisted that any alleged revelation must be brought to the test of reason." - Edward Scribner Ames

"Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly Mahāyāna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly HÄ«nayāna. These are temples where only the HÄ«nayāna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both Mahāyāna and HÄ«nayāna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the Mahāyāna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [HÄ«nayāna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [Mahāyāna and HÄ«nayāna] practices are carried out." - Saichō NULL

"I’m just like this speed bump in the middle, slowing everyone down because I keep fucking up." - Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown

"Emmeline’s world, that had hung shining throughout the week like a bubble on some divine breath, contracted suddenly to this room – staring, positive, full of shelves and tables – the scene of some terror from which she had lately fled." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

"The third day was nearly all wet, though it cleared towards evening and a fine sunset crimsoned the canal. Today it had come on about lunch time, a different rain; finer, gentler, more inexorable, that made the air woolly, left a muddy taste in one’s mouth and dulled everything." - Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

"For you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let’s enjoy this time. It’s marvelous." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"We're already separated that's official but there's still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Women’s sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women as to see themselves in a relationship of connection…I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein that have quietly buried in many neat rows– the personal dreams they have given up for their families…(Women) have a sort of talent for changing form, enabling them to dissolve and then flow around the needs of their partners, or the needs of their children, or the needs of mere quotidian reality. They adjust, adapt, glide, accept. The cold ugly fact is that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. From studies, married men perform dazzingly better in life, live longer, accumulate more, excel at careers, report to be happier, less likely to die from a violent death, suffer less from alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression than single man…The reverse is not true. In fact, every fact is reverse, single women fare much better than married women. On average, married women take a 7% pay cut. All of this adds up to what Sociologists called the Marriage Benefit Imbalance…It is important to pause here and inspect why so women long for it (marriage) so deeply." - Elizabeth Gilbert

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

"I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money." - Dorothy Parker

"What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?" - Emil M. Cioran

"I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine; 'he's your son. But I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me and for that reason I love him. Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery! You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you, when you die! I wouldn't be you!" - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

"The Chinese government keeps installing video cameras in its most troubling cities. Not only do such cameras remind passersby about the panopticon they inhabit, they also supply the secret police with useful clues[...]. Such revolution in video surveillance did not happen without some involvement from Western partners. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, funded in part by the Chinese government, have managed to build surveillance software that can automatically annotate and comment on what it sees, generating text files that can later be searched by humans, obviating the need to watch hours of video footage in search of one particular frame. (To make that possible, the researchers had to recruit twenty graduates of local art colleges in China to annotate and classify a library of more than two million images.) Such automation systems help surveillance to achieve the much needed scale, for as long as the content produced by surveillance cameras can be indexed and searched, one can continue installing new surveillance cameras. [...] The face-recognition industry is so lucrative that even giants like Google can’t resist getting into the game, feeling the growing pressure from saller players like Face.com, a popular tool that allows users to find and automatically annotate unique faces that apepar throughout their photo collections. In 2009 Face.com launched a Facebook application that first asks users to identify a Facebook friend of theirs ina photo and then proceeds to search the social networking site for other pictures in which that friend appears. By early 2010, the company boasted of scanning 9 billion pictures and identifying 52 million individuals. This is the kind of productivity that would make the KGB envious." - Evgeny Morozov

"DonÂ’t you have any sense of privacy? I blurted out. She got furious at me for this. What are you talking about? These people live with me and love me. Naturally they want to know what is happening with me! So I tell them. They give me reactions, advice, they look at me, I see myself through them as well as through myself." - Ernest Callenbach