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

William Matthews

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which one attempts to do... The smallest thing well done, becomes artistic.

Expectation | Expectation |

William McKinley

I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made President.

Grief | Heart | Inquiry | Security | Sorrow |

William Law

Being thus saved himself, he may be zealous in the salvation of souls.

Conversation | Folly | Health | Strength | Thinking | Weakness |

William Morris

Mastership hath many shifts whereby it striveth to keep itself alive in the world. And now hear a marvel: whereas thou sayest these two times that out of one man ye may get but one man's work, in days to come one man shall do the work of a hundred men — yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the shift of mastership that shall make many masters and many rich men.

Death | Folly | Hope |

Drew Curtis

Mass Media will respond that media issues are of great importance because they impact the public trust in news organizations. This ignores the fact that most people already believe Mass Media either makes stuff up, is biased one way or the other, or constantly gets information wrong. Finding out that journalists sometimes invent stories just confirms their preexisting viewpoint.

Innovation | Security | Sense | Survival | Thinking | Will | Loss |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The most dangerous weakness of old people who have been amiable is to forget they are no longer so.

Folly | People | Old |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Folly | Wise |

William Shakespeare

Oh, thou hast a damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked.

Folly | Love | Passion |

William Shakespeare

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind and makes it fearful and degenerate.

Despair | Ends | Expectation | Hope | Expectation |

Edwin Percy Whipple

What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make.

Avarice | Folly | History | Life | Life | Time |

Edward Scribner Ames

Nothing yet proves that continued progress is inevitable, but that it is possible no one but an extreme skeptic or pessimist can doubt.

Bible | Example | Intelligence | Life | Life | Reflection | Rest | Revelation | Security | Words | Bible |

Elihu Root

When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

Better | Character | Evil | Folly | Government | Ignorance | Indifference | Indolence | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Responsibility | Suffering | Time | World | Wrong | Government |

William Shakespeare

SIMONIDES: And she is fair too, is she not? PERICLES: As a fair day in summer, wondrous fair.

Folly | Love |

William Shakespeare

She pined in thought; And, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.

Folly |

William Shakespeare

Serve God, love me, and mend.

Folly |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become log-jammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Better | Distress | Heart | Inquiry | Question | Security | Will |