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

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II

It demonstrates how we must conduct this mortal life of ours. If we are to achieve God's purpose in our regard we have a twofold obligation: as citizens of earth, and as citizens of heaven. That is to say, all men without exception, both individually and in society, have a life-long obligation to strive after heavenly values through the right use of the things of this earth. These temporal goods must be used in such a way as not to jeopardize eternal happiness.

Church | Example | Freedom | Intention | Men | Motives | Problems | Right | Thought | Thought |

Rudyard Kipling

For you all love the screw-guns the screw-guns they all love you! So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do—hoo! hoo! Jest send in your Chief an' surrender it's worse if you fights or you runs: You may hide in the caves, they'll be only your graves, but you can't get away from the guns!

Motives |

Russell Kirk

Global environmentalists have said and written enough to leave no doubt that their goal is to destroy the prosperous economies of the world's richest nations.

Freedom | Leisure | Mankind | Men | Motives | Think |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases

Motives |

Samuel Gompers

I feel persuaded that the time has come when we shall have a constructive, progressive, radical labor party, unless the Democratic party shall perform its duties in the premises.

Duty | Government | Law | Motives | Right | Wealth | Government | Govern | Understand |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

Motives |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals,and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.

Fear | Little | Motives | People |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

It's completely stupid to write love letters, cannot be reproduced by a simple letter, but what to do when this terrible ocean separates us from the man we love?

Emotions | Experience | Instinct | Motives | Opinion | Order | Value |

Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

Men | Motives | Truth | Wise |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them.

Doubt | Motives | Nature | World |

Thomas Jefferson

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

Action | Life | Life | Malice | Motives |

Thomas Jefferson

Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.

Better | Care | Duty | Education | Excitement | Father | Feelings | Force | Ideas | Life | Life | Motives | Opposition | Receive | Right | Sentiment | Society | Will | Society | Child | Parent |

Thomas Jefferson

The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent ... It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

Action | Evil | Future | Good | Honesty | Imperfection | Motives | Reason | Sense | Society | Sound | Society | Happiness |

Thomas Jefferson

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Action | Evil | Future | Good | Honesty | Motives | Reason | Society | Sound | Society | Happiness |

Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.

Action | Evil | Future | Good | Honesty | Motives | Reason | Sense | Society | Sound | Society | Happiness |

Thomas Merton

The life of the soul is not knowledge, it is love, since love is the act of the supreme faculty, the will, by which man is formally united to the final end of all his striving – by which man becomes one with God.

Action | Contemplation | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Motives | Present | Purity | Simplicity | Contemplation |

Thomas Reid

It may happen, that when appetite draws one way, it may be opposed, not by any appetite or passion, but by some cool principle of action, which has authority without any impulsive force.

Influence | Motives | Question |

W. Ian Thomas, fully Walter Ian Thomas

Faith in all its sheer simplicity! Faith that takes God precisely at His Word! Faith that simply says, "Thank You."

Capacity | Conformity | Contrast | God | Liberty | Man | Motives | Mystery | Nature | Object | Will | God | Understand |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.

Control | Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

The Wizard of Oz (M. G. M.) should settle an old Hollywood controversy: whether fantasy can be presented on the screen as successfully with human actors as with cartoons.

Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |