Great Throughts Treasury

"Those who do not wish to taste how sweet the Lord is and love the darkness rather than the light (Jn. 3:19), not wishing to fulfill the commands of God, are cursed: of them the prophet says: They are cursed who stray from your commands (Ps. 118:21). But Oh, how happy and blessed are those who love God and do as the Lord Himself says in the Gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Mt. 22:37, 39)." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"If an experience fails to engender humility, charity, mortification, holy simplicity, and silence, etc., of what value is it? In this faith God supernaturally and secretly teaches the soul and, in a way unknown to it, raises it up in virtues and gifts. When together with the words and concepts the soul is loving God and simultaneously experiencing this love with humility and reverence, there is indication that the Holy Spirit is at work within it. Whenever He bestows favors, He clothes them with this love." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"The passions are like dogs accustomed to lick blood in butchers' shops. When these are barred from what their habit feeds on, they stand in front of the doors and howl until the force of their previous custom is spent." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"The person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"I cannot think of the results of your labors without shame at the little we do." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"I always say beauty is only sin deep." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL

"Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?" - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavorable to the realization of complete satisfaction." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact—which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!" - Stephan Jay Gould

"Exiled spirits, red as the spotless toe of a seraph spread with scarlet by the shame of rumpled dawns." - Stephane Mallarme, born Étienne Mallarmé

"That which acts for an end unknown to itself, depends upon some overruling wisdom that knows that end. Who should direct them in all those ends, but He that bestowed a being upon them for those ends; who knows what is convenient for their life, security, and propagation of their natures? An exact knowledge is necessary both of what is agreeable to them, and the means whereby they must attain it, which, since it is not inherent in them, is in that wise God who puts those instincts into them, and governs them in the exercise of them to such ends." - Stephen Charnock

"Every rose is an autograph from the hand of God on his world about us. - He has inscribed his thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have, these many thousand years, been seeking to understand." - Theodore Parker

"Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Money, which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at all and even less." - Thomas Carlyle

"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you." - Thomas Hardy

"Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people." - Thomas Jefferson

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy." - Thomas Paine

"There is no value for the brilliantly shining diamond-like piece of glass in the eyes of a jeweller." - Uttaradhyayana Sutra

"Reeds of Innocence - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!’ So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. ‘Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read.’ So he vanish’d from my sight; And I pluck’d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. " - William Blake

"Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind." - William Blake

"Where there is money there is no art." - William Blake

"I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader's defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more." - William Collins

"Can a woman's tender care cease towards the child she bare? Yes, she may forgetful be, yet will I remember thee." - William Cowper

"And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"Millions and millions of people don't pay an income tax, because they don't earn enough to pay on one, but you pay a land tax whether it ever did or ever will earn you a penny. You should pay on things that you buy outside of bare necessities. I think this sales tax is the best tax we have had in years." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"Well, they finally stopped us from sending marines to every war that we could hear of. They are having one in Afghanistan. The thing will be over before Congress can pronounce it, much less find out where it is located." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance." - Will and Ariel Durant

"Thirty or forty years ago, in one those grey towns along the Burlington railroad which are so much greyer to-day than they were then, there was a house well know from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"What am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Since you have forsaken the world and turned wholly to God, you are symbolically dead in the eyes of men; therefore, let your heart be dead to all earthly affections and concerns… For you must be well aware that if we make an outward show of conversion to God without giving Him our hearts, it is only a shadow and pretense of virtue, and no true conversion. Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God." - Walter Hilton

"In the course of many centuries a few laborsaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Nobody can honestly think of himself as a strong character because, however successful he may be in overcoming them, he is necessarily aware of the doubts and temptations that accompany every important choice." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin--the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"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

"She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"What could be more charming than a boy before he has begun to cultivate his intellect? He is beautiful to look at; he gives himself no airs; he understands the meaning of art and literature instinctively; he goes about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Evil has no power except what we falsely give it." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"We need the wisdom to have nothing to say." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard