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

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them.

Childhood | Principles | Study | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

Knowledge | Liberty | Love | Principles | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles with the just fear of God and love of our fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.

Eternity | Fear | God | Love | Principles | Time | Will | Wisdom | Work | God |

Peter R. Breggin

There is probably no direct way to get in touch with our inner selves or to seek out satisfaction and happiness. It’s best to live by sound principles – honesty, courage, liberty, and love – and then to await what unfolds. When, inevitably, we go astray for a time, we must return, once again, to living by the principles we cherish. The formula isn’t all that difficult to understand; applying it is the work of a lifetime.

Courage | Honesty | Liberty | Love | Principles | Sound | Time | Work |

Phillips Brooks

We may call it spirituality, enthusiasm, spontaneity, outlook, insight, - many names will do, - but what we mean by all of them is essentially the same. It is the power to see the element of eternal principles in which things live, - to see the way in which each fact and act is a true wave on the great ocean of infinity, to see all life full of the life of God, - and so to lose the sense of hardness and separateness in the things which happen and things we do.

Enthusiasm | Eternal | God | Insight | Life | Life | Power | Principles | Sense | Spirituality | Will |

L. Francis Edmunds

An organism lives by growth, by processes of change, by powers of generation, but its interfusion with other organisms and with its environment, also by its `mental state’ in which is vested the unifying principles pervading all its parts and subdivisions, rising in man to the conscious mental state, to self-awareness, and with this self-awareness to advance further by directed effort.

Awareness | Change | Effort | Growth | Man | Principles | Self | Self-awareness |

James Frazer, aka James George Frazer

The old view that the principles of right and wrong are immutable and eternal is no longer tenable. The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.

Change | Eternal | Law | Little | Principles | Right | World | Wrong | Old |

Sidney Greenberg

Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut.

Character | Deeds | Discipline | Duty | Little | Principles | Self | Temptation | Learn |

Os Guiness

When it is said and done, life’s journey isn’t about humanity in general, or even the person next door. It’s about you and me. Our individual lives are the focus, a picture framed by our birth and death. Our personal goals and principles are under scrutiny; our personal success or failure is in the balance.

Balance | Birth | Death | Failure | Focus | Goals | Humanity | Individual | Journey | Life | Life | Principles | Success | Failure |

David Hume

The same principles [that apply in polytheism] naturally deify mortals, superior in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero-worship.

Courage | Hero | Power | Principles | Understanding | Worship |

Abraham Lincoln

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Important | Principles |

James Russell Lowell

It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it – that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is impracticable.

Action | Duty | Ends | Loyalty | Loyalty | Men | Motives | Policy | Principles | Public |

John C. Maxwell

Policies are many, principles are few. Policies will change, principles never do.

Change | Principles | Will |

Thomas Paine

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Business | Conduct | Conscience | Death | Distress | Esteem | Heart | Little | Love | Man | Principles | Reflection | Smile | Strength | Will | Business |

Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa

I question whether God himself would wish me to hide behind the principles of non-violence while innocent people were being slaughtered.

God | People | Principles | Question | God |

Rosemary Radford Ruether

In God’s Kingdom the corrupting principles of domination and subjugation will be overcome. People will no longer model social or religious relationships; or even relationships to God after the sort of power that reduces others to servility. Rather they will discover a new kind of power, a power exercised through service, which empowers the disinherited and brings all to a new relationship of mutual enhancement.

God | Model | People | Power | Principles | Relationship | Service | Will | God |

Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

Our strategy is “pit one against ten,” and our tactics are “pit ten against one” – This is one of our fundamental principles for gaining mastery over the enemy.

Enemy | Principles |