Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Thomas Jefferson

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

Good | Happy | Industry | Labor | Men | Wise |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which explains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course.

Achievement | Ecstasy | Force | Labor | Time | Will | Wise | Work |

Thomas Merton

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.

Desire | Dreams | Light | Nothing | People | Waiting | Wisdom | Wise | World |

Thomas Merton

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

Action | Courage | Death | Destroy | Experience | Hope | Instinct | Life | Life | Logic | Love | Man | Need | Order | Peace | Power | Question | Sense | Taste | War | Will | Wise | Work | World | Learn |

Thomas Paine

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

Men | Wise |

Thomas Nashe

The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, as well as the upright of heart.

Kindness | Little | Love | Man | Right | Will | Wise | Think |

Thomas Paine

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

Wise |

Thomas Merton

The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist... It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.

Good | Love | Man | Men | Mercy | Object | Wise |

Thomas Merton

We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual.

Life | Life | Order | Wise |

Vimalia McClure

Parenting is a spiritual path which can bring great pain and great joy and which can have a tremendous positive impact on your personality and behavior. I believe our children, unknowingly and with innocent trickery, teach us the deeper knowledge of how to be a true human being.

Consciousness | Gentleness | Love | Mother | Wise |

Uttaradhyayana Sutra

Those souls who are too much attached with karma, enlightenment is very rare.

Man | Wise |

W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson

Inspirations - Sometimes, I know not why, nor how, nor whence, A change comes over me, and then the task Of common life slips from me. Would you ask What power is this which bids the world go hence? Who knows? I only feel a faint perfume Steal through the rooms of life; a saddened sense Of something lost; a music as of brooks That babble to the sea; pathetic looks Of closing eyes that in a darkened room Once dwelt on mine: I feel the general doom Creep nearer, and with God I stand alone. O mystic sense of sudden quickening! Hope’s lark-song rings, or life’s deep undertone Wails through my heart--and then I needs must sing.

Father | Wise |

William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe, And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers. ‘The narrow bud opens her beauties to The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins; Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve, Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing, And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head. ‘The spirits of the air live on the smells Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.’ Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat; Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

Boys | Children | Heaven | Little | Wise |

Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer

The man of Woe - The mann whose thoughtes agaynste him do conspyre, One whom Mishapp her storye dothe depaynt, The mann of woe, the matter of desier, Free of the dead, that lives in endles plaint, His spirit am I, whiche in this deserte lye, To rue his case, whose cause I cannot flye. Despayre my name, whoe never findes releife, Frended of none, but to my selfe a foe; An idle care, mayntaynde by firme beleife That prayse of faythe shall throughe my torments growe, And counte those hopes, that others hartes do ease, Butt base conceites the common sense to please. For sure I am I never shall attayne The happy good from whence my joys aryse; Nor haue I powre my sorrows to refrayne But wayle the wante, when noughte ellse maye suffyse; Whereby my lyfe the shape of deathe muste beare, That deathe which feeles the worst that lyfe doth feare. But what auayles withe tragicall complaynte, Not hopinge healpe, the Furyes to awake? Or why shoulde I the happy mynds aquaynte With doleful tunnes, theire settled peace to shake? All ye that here behoulde Infortune's feare, May judge noe woe may withe my gref compare. Finis. Sir Edward Dyer

Desire | Good | Happy | Hope | Love | Man | Present | Wise | Woe |

William Blake

If you trap the moment before it’s ripe, The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go, You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

Wise |

William Blake

I cry, love! Love! Love! Happy, happy love! Free as the mountain wind!

Care | Good | Man | Wise |

William Blake

Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.

Wise |

William Blake

A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.

Man | Wise |

William Arthur

Each sinner transformed into a saint is a new token of a redeeming power among men. That token declares to observers, not that there is a King in heaven, not that there is a "Father of Lights," but that there is a Savior. And this is the testimony that the world especially needs.

Heart | Little | Wise |

William Cowper

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.

Life | Life | Noise | Success | Wisdom | Wise |