Great Throughts Treasury

"It was a country . . . that he and his people had known how to use and abuse, but not how to preserve." - Wendell Berry

"Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone." - Wendell Berry

"O stand, stand at the window as the tears scald and start; you shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"[Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogized, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practiced the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to stimulate the devotion of the people." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"Marxists are absolutely convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution. What does this mean? It means that the democratic reforms in the political system and the social and economic reforms, which have become a necessity for Russia, do not in themselves imply the undermining of capitalism, the undermining of bourgeois rule; on the contrary, they will, for the first time, really clear the ground for a wide and rapid, European, and not Asiatic, development of capitalism; they will, for the first time, make it possible for the bourgeoisie to rule as a class." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be happy." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Words without experience are meaningless. [alternatively, Words without experience would have no meaning.]" - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The world today forces us to accept, at least intellectually, our oneness, our interrelatedness. And more and more people are awakening to the urgency of arresting the accelerating madness around us. As yet, however, our ways of responding are superficial, unequal to the complexities of the challenge. We do not take or even consider actions that threaten our security or alter our habitual ways of drifting through life. If we continue to live carelessly, indifferently, emphasizing private gain and personal indulgence, we are essentially opting for the suicide of humanity." - Vimala Thakar

"We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us." - Vimala Thakar

"We have moved very far away from love in our collective lives, dangerously near destruction, close to starvation. Perhaps we have the wisdom now, the awareness that love is as essential to human beings as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Love is the beauty, the delicate mystery, the soul of life, the radiant unspoiled purity that brings spontaneous joy, songs of ecstasy, poems, paintings, dances, dramas to celebrate its indescribable, never-to-be-fully-captured bliss of being. Can we bring love into the marketplaces, into the homes, the schools, the places of business, and transform them completely? You may call it a utopian challenge, but it is the only one that will make a significant difference or that is fully worthy of the potential of whole human beings." - Vimala Thakar

"I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey." - Vince Gill

"A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"And I is high tide. Swell. He arches his back. I feel a fresh miss that cableaz? that proud steed that rider hits him with spurs and Harness it then. You, that I wear on his back, tell me what enemy is the one who came to see us, while our rings clatter on the pavement? 's Death. Death is the enemy. I can run against her spear lying down, with long hair flying behind me like tresses of a young man as you gallop Percival's tresses in India. Stick spurs into the horse's ribs. Unbridled and ruthless, I can run against you, Death! waves crashing to shore." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It being her experience that the religious ecstasy made people callous (so did causes); dulled their feelings." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you anymore but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Befriend him, death, and pity him, may he from here arise. Unharmed, with sound limbs, hearing perfectly, through old age carrying a hundred years, let him get enjoyment by himself (unaided)." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"What little man has to accomplish must be done quickly, at the place that is assigned to him and within the time that is allotted to him. And, man has such a formidable task before him; it is to fulfill it that he has come as man, exchanging for this human habitat all the merit he has acquired during many past lives. The task is no less than the manifestation of the Divinity latent in man." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"That is very dangerous... in an absolutely legal way and in accordance with the wording of the law, but against the spirit of the ... constitution." - Václav Havel

"The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being." - Václav Havel

"Whenever logical processes of thought are employed— that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove— there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine." - Vannevar Bush

"You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It’s exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity of the children of God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It is the naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busy-ness for the Kingdom of God—yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the soul's growth! The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men's problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. Like the mercy of Shakespeare, "'tis mightiest in the mightiest." But it binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration of Him who is all in all." - Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

"Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"It seems unspeakably important that all persons among us, and especially the student and the writer, should be pervaded with Americanism. Americanism includes the faith that national self-government is not a chimera, but that, with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are steadily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this good thing all other good things must in time be added. When a man is heartily imbued with such a national sentiment as this, it is as marrow in his bones and blood in his veins. He may still need culture, but he has the basis of all culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable patience and hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in our intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may then be cheerfully endured: if a man sees his house steadily rising on sure foundations, he can wait or let his children wait for the cornice and the frieze. But if one happens to be born or bred in America without this wholesome confidence, there is no happiness for him; he has his alternative between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad; it is a choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of martyrdom for his friends." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"It is pride which plies the world with so much harshness and severity. - We are as rigorous to offences as if we had never offended." - Hugh Blair

"But words are words; I never did hear that the bruised heart was pierced through the ear. Othello, Act I, Scene 3" - William Shakespeare

"Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?" - William James

"The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same. The certainty of God's 'grace,' of 'justification,' 'salvation,' is an objective belief that usually accompanies the change in Christians; but this may be entirely lacking and yet the affective peace remain the same — you will recollect the case of the Oxford graduate: and many might be given where the assurance of personal salvation was only a later result. A passion of willingness, of acquiescence, of admiration, is the glowing center of this state of mind." - William James

"Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God." - William Law

"Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life where we can act reasonably, and offers what we do to the glory of God." - William Law

"Upon this principle I imagine it is that some of the finest pieces of antiquity are written in the dialogue manner. Plato and Tully, it should seem, thought truth could never be examined with more advantage than amidst the amicable opposition of well-regulated converse." - William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne

"And the clouds fade above. Loved lips are thine as i tremble and hearken; bright thine eyes shine, though the leaves thy brow darken. O love, kiss me into silence, lest no word avail me, stay my head with thy bosom lest breath and life fail me! O sweet day, o rich day, made long for our love!" - William Morris

"You know, said Arthur, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young. Why, what did she tell you?I don't know, I didn't listen." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

"Zaphod Beeblebrox crawled bravely along a tunnel, like the hell of a guy he was. He was very confused, but he continued crawling doggedly anyway because he was that brave." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

"O you mighty gods! This world I do renounce, and in your sights shake patiently my great affliction off. If I could bear it longer, and not fall to quarrel with your great opposeless wills, my snuff and loathed part of nature should burn itself out." - William Shakespeare

"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. Othello the Moor of Venice (Iago at II, iii)" - William Shakespeare

"Hell is in the here and now. So is heaven. Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven, as they are both present inside this very moment. Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy, or fight someone, we tumble straight into the fires of hell." - Elif Safak

"I wondered why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Asexual reproduction by females, parthenogenesis, is not only possible but it still occurs here and there in the modern world, perhaps as an atavistic survival of the once only means of reproduction in an all-female world." - Elizabeth Gould Davis

"Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Our course heavenward is like the plan of the zealous pilgrim of old, who for every three steps forward, took one backward." - Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

"All hope is prayer; who calls it hope no more, sends prayer footsore forth over weary wastes, while he who calls it prayer, gives wings to hope." - 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

"A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away." - Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels the work." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson