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

Léon Bloy

Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.

Character | Existence | Heart | Man | Order | Suffering |

Jean de La Bruyère

It is a very rare thing to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |

Georg Brandes, fully Georg Morris Cohen Brandes

The appalling thing about war is that it kills all love of truth.

Character | Love | Truth | War |

Francis William Bourdillon

The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.

Character | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mind |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears - anxieties for ills that never happen - a greater part of the other half.

Character | Poverty | World |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Eternal | God | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | God | Happiness |

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

A woman’s head is always influenced by her heart; but a man’s heart is always influenced by his head.

Character | Heart | Man | Woman |

Thomas Brooks

Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much; humbled.

Character | Grace | Heart | Love | Mercy | Nothing | Sin | Will |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

Character | Heart | Joy | Mind |

William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

Character | Man | Perception |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

It is one thing to be carried through an endless life, another thing to embrace the whole presence of an endless life together, which is manifestly proper to the divine Mind. The temporal world seems to emulate in part that which it cannot fully obtain or express, tying itself to whatever presence there is in this exiguous and fleeting moment - a presence which, since it carries a certain image of that abiding Presence, gives to whatever may partake of it the quality of seeming to have being. But because it could not stay, it undertook an infinite journey of time; and so it came to pass that, by going, it continued that life, whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Mind | Time | World |

Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun

The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.

Ability | Character | Love |

Jean de La Bruyère

He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.

Character | Recompense | Success |

William Blake

The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation, of vegetation, is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the permanent realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.

Body | Character | Death | Eternal | Eternity | Imagination | Nature | World |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

Whose happiness is so firmly established that he has no quarrel from any side with his estate of life?

Character | Life | Life | Happiness |