Great Throughts Treasury

"Discontentment is human, contentment is divine. Animals know neither contentment nor discontentment; they simply go on living mechanically, unconsciously. It is the great privilege of human being to be aware of discontent. To be aware of discontent means there is a possibility to grow towards contentment. But very few people make any effort towards inner growth. Their whole life is rooted in a misunderstanding. They think that if they have a bigger house or more money or more power or more prestige they will be contented; that if they become famous, if their name is known all over the world, then they will be contented. That is sheer nonsense." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Nothing else in all life is such a maker of joy and cheer as the privilege of doing good." - J. R. Miller, fully James Russell Miller

"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges." -

"Every generation has the privilege of standing on the shoulders of the generation that went before; but it has no right to pick the pockets of the first-comer. " - Brander Matthews, fully James Brander Matthews

"Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art....It is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world." - Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

"Man’s task is to reconcile liberty with service, reason with faith. This is the deepest wisdom man can attain. It is our destiny to serve, to surrender. We have to conquer in order to succumb; we have to acquire in order to give away; we have to triumph in order to be overwhelmed. Man has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept. The aspiration is to obtain; the perfection is to dispense. This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for this act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The deepest wisdom man can attain is to know that his destiny is to aid, to serve. We have to conquer in order to succumb; we have to acquire in order to give away; we have to triumph in order to be overwhelmed. Man has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept. The aspiration is to obtain; the perfection is to dispense. This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for the act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us." - Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. " - Joseph Campbell

"Man's most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to obey or disobey his Maker." - Joseph H. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz

"Civilized man has been more ruthlessly wasteful and grasping in his attitude toward the natural world than has served even his most material best interests. Possibly - as some hope - a mere enlightened selfishness will save it in time. Even if we should learn just in the nick of time not to destroy what is necessary for our own preservation, the mere determination to survive is not sufficient to save very much of the variety and beauty of the natural world. They can e preserved only if man feels the necessity of sharing the earth with at least some of his fellow creatures to be a privilege rather han an irritation. And he is not likely to feel that without something more than intellectual curiosity - that something more you may call love, fellow-feeling, or reverence for life. Without reverence or love the increasing awareness of what the science of ecology teaches us can come to be no more than a shrewder exploitation of what it would be better to admire, to enjoy, and to share in." - Joseph Wood Krutch

"Gratitude. America has lived in a world of privilege at great cost to the environment. Why do we feel entitled, and not grateful?" - Layne Longfellow

"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired." - Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor

"I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living -- the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals" - Marian Wright Edelman

"I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each — an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

"One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence, others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws. Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others: Those who had a republican taste, applied it to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it to monarchies. Thus they all have applied the name of liberty to the government most conformable to their own customs and inclinations: and as in a republic people have not so constant and so present a view of the instruments of the evils they complain of, and likewise as the laws seem there to speak more, and the executors of the laws less, it is generally attributed to republics, and denied to monarchies. In fine as in democracies the people seem to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in this sort of government, and the power of the people has been confounded with their liberty." - Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Death is the privilege of human nature, and life without it were not worth our taking." - Nicolas Rowe

"Death is the privilege of human nature, and life without it were not worth our taking: Thither the poor, the pris'ner, and the mourner fly for relief, and lay the burthens down." - Nicolas Rowe

"If he owned the Museum, and you had paid him for the privilege of visiting it, and he had then insulted you, there might be some reason in your resenting it, but in this instance he is the man who pays, while we receive, and you must, therefore, put up with his bad manners." - P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum

"Slow food supports the re-creation of networks of traditional food producers with customers to that both may thrive. It is about conserving the heritage of the exquisite variety of tastes humankind has created, which means organizing farmers markets and ensuring both that varieties of fruits and vegetables and rare breeds of animals do not become extinct, and that the people who are artisans of food are supported and can pass on their craft to future generations... To those who argue that gastronomy is a privilege of the affluent and hardly a suitable environmental cuase, (Carlo) Patrini replies that food lovers who are not environmentalists are naive, and an ecologist who does not take time to savor his food and culture leads a deprived life." - Paul Hawken

"The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders… The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. " - Paulo Freire

"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. " - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children." -

"Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children." - Phillips Brooks

"When the human heart becomes conscious of God, it becomes like the sea: it extends its waves to friend and foe. Man's greatest privilege is to become a suitable instrument of God. The heart of the Holy One is the gate of God's shrine." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Of men, some enter into life as fragments of the All, bound to that which is external to themselves: they are victims of a sort of fascination, and are hardly, or not at all, themselves: but others mastering all this- straining, so to speak, by the head towards the Higher, to what is outside even the Soul- preserve still the nobility and the ancient privilege of the Soul's essential being." - Plotinus NULL

"Nevertheless, in the face of the undeniable mutability of even inanimate nature, there still rises the enigma of the unexplored microcosm. It seemed, in fact, that, unlike the organic world, inorganic matter was in a certain sense immutable. Its tiniest parts, the chemical atoms, were indeed capable of combining in most diversified manners, but they appeared to be endowed with a privilege of eternal stability and indestructibility, since they emerged unchanged from every chemical synthesis and analysis. A hundred years ago, the elementary particles were still regarded as simple, indivisible, and indestructible. The same idea prevailed regarding the material energy and forces of the cosmos, especially on the basis of the fundamental laws of the conservation of mass and energy. Some natural scientists went so far as to consider themselves authorized to formulate in the name of their science a fantastic monastic philosophy, whose sorry memory is linked up, among others, with the name of Ernst Haeckel. But in the very lifetime of the latter, toward the end of the last century, even this over-simplified conception of the chemical atom was shattered by modern science. The growing knowledge of the periodic system of chemical elements, the discovery of the corpuscular radiations of radio active elements, along with many other similar facts, have demonstrated that the microcosm of the chemical atom, with dimensions as small as ten-millionths of a millimeter, is a theater of continuous mutations, no less than the macrocosm known to all. It was in the sphere of electronics that the character of mutability was first established. From the electronic structure of the atom there emanate radiations of light and heat which are absorbed by outside bodies, corresponding to the energy level of the electronic orbits. In the exterior parts of this sphere there takes place the ionization of the atom and the transformation of energy in the synthesis and analysis of chemical combinations. At that time, however, it was possible to suppose that these chemico-physical transformations provided one last refuge for stability, since they did not reach the very nucleus of the atom, which is the seat of its mass and of the positive electric charge which determine the place of the chemical atom in the natural system of the elements, and where it seemed science had found, so to speak, an example of an absolutely stable and invariable being." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL

"Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act." - Albert Einstein

"You cannot help being a politician. You cannot live for an hour without being a politician. But what a man generally means when he says that he is not a politician I am afraid is this--that he has been all his life enjoying his political privilege and grossly neglecting his political duties; and in that sense the observation is scarcely to his credit. As a matter of fact, politics, properly understood, is simply Science of Life--the doctrine of the way in which I am to do my duty to my neighbor, which is an essential part of true religion. It is nothing in the world except religion applied to human society; in fact, it is the practical recognition of the Second Table of the Law of God." - Hugh Price Hughes

"The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"You could give Aristotle a tutorial and you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all-time intellect, yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues." - Richard Dawkins

"Realize that the privilege to work is a gift. Love of work is success. Be thankful that every morning that you get up that you have something that must be done (whether you like it or not)." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans

"King David was not allowed to build the Temple in Jerusalem because he had been a man of war; the privilege of constructing the Temple was reserved for his son Solomom, whose very name is derived from shalom (peace)." - Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn

"If present and future depend on the past, then present and future should exist in past time If present and future do not exist in it, how can present and future exist in dependence on it? The establishment of the two does not occur without dependence on the past, Therefore, present and future time do not exist. By this method the remaining two [times] are to be treated mutatis mutandis. One should examine the top, bottom, and middle, etc., and the oneness, etc. Non-abiding time is not perceived, and abiding time does not occur; How can imperceptible time be designated? If time depends on an entity, where is there time without an entity? No entity exists, so where would time exist?" - Seng-Chao or Sengzhao NULL

"The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds-- The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband an' 'e gives 'er all she needs; But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun', They're just the same as you an' me, a'-plyin' up an' down." - Rudyard Kipling

"But in the holy love which is God, I beg all brothers, both the minister and the others, as they overcome every obstacle and put aside every care and anxiety, to strive as best they can to serve, love, honor, and adore the Lord God with a clean heart and a pure mind, for this is what He desires above all things." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"The other thing that prevents people standing up, ... is a kind of cultural defensiveness. The kind of not-washing-your-dirty-linen-in-public argument. That we in the Muslim world are under attack. And, as a result, we put up defenses. And we don't criticize even the worst people in the family. Because if it's your family, and you happen to have an idiot child, you don't tell the world it's an idiot child." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease, and drowsy without tranquility." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Technology without hate can be so beneficial for mankind, but in conjunction with hatred, it leads to disaster." - Simon Wiesenthal

"If every attribute of the Deity were a distinct member, holiness would be the soul to animate them. Without holiness His patience would be an indulgence to sin, His mercy a fondness, His wrath a madness, His power a tyranny, His wisdom an unworthy subtlety.Holiness gives decorum to them all." - Stephen Charnock

"The song "I'm Losing my Mind" from Follies is a torch song. It started out as a total imitation of Gershwin's "The Man I Love". I knew I wanted a particular kind of song there. And I knew that I wanted to imitate a certain style and feel. So if I was going to imitate, I might as well imitate the best." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

"Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, firmly-founded but by no means uniformly transparent medium of experience." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes. The expression of history in things is no other than that of past torment." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitute for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo

"The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech." - Thomas Hobbes

"The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered." - Thomas Jefferson

"You seem to consider the federal judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have with others the same passions for the party, for power and the privilege of the corps. Their power is the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." - Thomas Jefferson