Great Throughts Treasury

"Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the Age, He is worshipped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst. Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

"There is in me a principle which thinks, wills and feels... Now this implies a begging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth that there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I think, will and feel. And I — the I that thinks, wills and feels — am immediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it sustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills and feels." - Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo

"Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, Or too regretful; Be still; What God hath ordered must be right; Then find in it thine own delight, My will. Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow About to-morrow. My heart? _One_ watches all with care most true; Doubt not that he will give thee too Thy part. Only be steadfast; never waver, Nor seek earth's favor, But rest: Thou knowest what God wills must be For all his creatures, so for thee, The best. " - Paul Fleming, also spelled Flemming

"The wicked can for the moment use God's creation in defiance of God's commandments. But this is a sort of miracle or mystery; as St. Paul said, God has made the creature subject to vanity against its will. It is reasonable to expect, if the world's whole raison d'être is to effect God's good pleasure, that the very natural agents and operations of the world should be such as to frustrate and enrage and torment those who set their wills against God's. If things are not at present like this, that is only a gratuitous mercy, on whose continuance the sinner has no reason to count. 'The world shall fight with him against the unwise.... Yea, a mighty wind shall stand up against them, and like a storm shall blow them away.'" - Peter Geach, fully Peter Thomas Geach

"Sacrifice thy will for others, that they may be disposed to sacrifice their wills for thee." - Rabbinical Proverbs

"Ours is but a borrowed existence, freely given us by God, and He keeps us in existence because indeed He wills it so. Ours is but a goodness in which there is so much infirmity and even degradation; there is so much error in our knowledge. This thought, while serving to make us humble, brings home to us by contrast the infinite majesty of God. And then if it is a question of others and no longer of ourselves, if we have suffered disillusionment about our neighbor whom we had believed to be better and wiser, let us remember that he too has suffered disillusionment about us; let us remember that he too is perhaps better than we are, and that whatever is our own as coming from ourselves-our deficiencies and failings—is inferior to everything our neighbor has from God. This is the foundation of humility in our relations with others. Lastly, we must admit that the disillusionments we ourselves experience, or which others experience through us, in view of the radical imperfection of the creature, are permitted that we may aspire more ardently to a knowledge and love of Him who is the truth and the life, whom we shall some day see as He sees Himself. We shall then understand the meaning of those words of St.Catherine of Siena: “The living, practical knowledge of our own wretchedness and the knowledge of God’s majesty are inseparable in their increase. They are like the lowest and highest points on a circle that is ever expanding." - Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange

"God laughs on two occasions. He laughs when two brothers divide land between them. They put a string across the land and say to each other, 'This side is mine, and that side is yours. God laughs and says to Himself, 'Why, this whole universe is Mine; and about a little clod they say, This side is mine, and that side is yours!' God laughs again when the physician says to the mother weeping bitterly because of her child's desperate illness: 'Don't be afraid, mother. I shall cure your child.' The physician does not know that no one can save the child if God wills that he should die" - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"What a person wills and not what they know determines their worth or unworth, power or impotence, happiness or unhappiness." - Robert M. Linder, fully Robert Mitchell Linder

"Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The United States has much to offer the third world war." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"When the world pushes you to your knees, you are in the perfect position to pray." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk." - Russell Kirk

"Man has free choice. Otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain... Free choice is the cause of its own movement, because by his free choice man moves himself to act." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? it's certainly not through me that You know them. But I'm stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"Those who see themselves not selfishly but for God, and who see God for God (as he is supreme eternal Goodness and is deserving of our love), when they contemplate God in blazing, consumed love discover the image of the human person in God. And they discover themselves, God's image, in God." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

"To the extent that you pray from your soul for the one who spread scandal about you, God will reveal the truth to those who were told the scandal." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

"I would never want any prayer that would not make the virtues grow within me." - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless." - Simone Weil

"There may be someone who, as a result of not hearing or of not believing, is ignorant of the one Nature, highest of all existing things, alone sufficient unto itself in its eternal beatitude, through its own omnipotent goodness granting and causing all other things to be something and in some respect to fare well. And he may also be ignorant of the many other things which we necessarily believe about God and His creatures. If so, then I think that in great part he can persuade himself of these matters merely by reason alone— if he is of even average intelligence. Although he can do this in many ways, I shall propose one [way] which I regard as the most accessible for him." - Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

"How shall I show my love is proved by deeds? Well - the little child will strew flowers...she will embalm the Divine Throne with their fragrance, will sing with silvery voice the canticle of love." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"True Charity consists in bearing with all the defects of our neighbor, in not being surprised at his failings, and in being edified by his least virtues; Charity must not remain shut up in the depths of the heart, for no man lighteth a candle and putteth it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. It seems to me that this candle represents the Charity which ought to enlighten and make joyful, not only those who are dearest to me, but all who are in the house." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

"There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world make not succession, or new objects, in the Divine mind; for all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world in regard of their existence. He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once; “Known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world”; but in their true order of succession, as they lie in the eternal council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be a succession and order of things as they are wrought, there is yet no succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them." - Stephen Charnock

"Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?" - Thomas Merton

"Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affectation of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent." - Thomas Merton

"It is sometimes discouraging to see how small the peace movement is, and especially here in America where it is most necessary. But we have to remember that this is the usual pattern, and the Bible has led us to expect it. Spiritual work is done with disproportionately small and feeble instruments.. And now above all when everything is so utterly complex, and when people collapse under the burden of confusions and cease to think at all, it is natural that few may want to take on the burden of trying to effect something in the moral and spiritual way, in political action. Yet this is precisely what has to be done." - Thomas Merton

"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all. They can only conceive one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men. They do not know that reality is to be sought not in division but in unity, for we are ‘members one of another.’" - Thomas Merton

"Why should a poet pray thus? poets scorn the boundaried love of country, being free of winds, and alien lands, and distances, Vagabonds of the compass, wayfarers, pilgrims of thought, the tongues of Pentecost their privilege, and in the peddler's pack the curious treasures of their stock-in-trade, bossy and singular, the heritage of poetry and science, polished bright, thin with the rubbing of too many hands; myth, glamour, hazard, fables dim as age, faith, doubt, perplexity, grief, hope, despair, wings, and great waters, and Promethean fire, man's hand to clasp, and Helen's mouth to kiss. Why then in little meadows hedge about a poet's pasture? shed a poet's cloak for fustian? cede a birthright, thus to map" - Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

"Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or calumny." - Victor Hugo

"He alone exists hereafter; this place is in His Power." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Don't be deceived. You must face Destiny. Preparation is only possible now. Don't be fooled by your sunny skies. When the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon your house, your private dwelling, your own family, your own fair hopes, your own strong muscles, your own body, your own soul itself, then it is well-nigh too late to build a house. You can only go inside what house you have and pray that it is founded upon the Rock. Be not deceived by distance in time or space, or the false security of a bank account and an automobile and good health and willing hands to work. Thousands, perhaps millions as good as you have had all these things and are perishing in body and, worse still, in soul today." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"But, poor old man, thou prun'st a rotten tree that cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. As You Like It, Act ii, Scene 3" - William Shakespeare

"Voluntary action is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions." - William James

"Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator." - William Law

"This useful, charitable, humble employment of yourselves is what I recommend to you with greatest earnestness, as being a substantial part of a wise and pious life." - William Law

"Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness." - William Law

"You are to honor, improve, and perfect the spirit that is within you: you are to prepare it for the kingdom of heaven, to nourish it with the love of God and of virtue, to adorn it with good works, and to make it as holy and heavenly as you can." - William Law

"A pattern is either right or wrong.... It is no stronger than its weakest point." - William Morris

"I too will go, remembering what I said to you, when any land, the first to which we came seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame, and all seemed won to you: but still I think, perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink, unless by some ill chance I first am slain. But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain." - William Morris

"Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Our wooing doth not end like an old play. Jack hath not Jill." - William Shakespeare

"Who would have many friends let him test but few." - Italian Proverbs