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

Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

The one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period [is] contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.

Superiority |

Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.

Honor | Man | Merit | Success |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? it's certainly not through me that You know them. But I'm stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love.

Hope | Life | Life | Merit | Nothing | Sin | Wills |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.

Merit |

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL

He that will teach himself in school, becomes a scholar to a fool.

Merit | Price | Redemption |

Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

There is no knowledge that is not impoverished, however rich it should be; but heaven and earth cannot contain the treasures of faith.

Awe | Heaven | Prayer | Will | Wonder |

Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

This dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul – called infused contemplation or mystical theology. God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love, without its doing anything. It is the loving wisdom of God, and He prepares it for the union of love with God. This Divine wisdom is night and darkness for the soul, and affliction and torment. When this pure light assails the soul, in order to expel its impurity, the soul feels itself to be so impure and miserable that it believes God to be against it, and things that it has set itself up against God.

Existence | Life | Life | Love | Merit | Soul | War | Worth |

Saint Vincent de Paul

A great good is worth being long desired.

Merit |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.

Beauty | Fame | Superiority | Wealth | Beauty |

Saint Vincent de Paul

Our Lord is pleased to deprive us of temporal goods; may it please His Divine Goodness to give us spiritual ones!

Grace | Lord | Merit | Order | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue | Wants |

Saint Vincent de Paul

Peace is worth far more than anything they might take from you.

Merit |

Saint Vincent de Paul

It is not easy to find perfect men in whom there is nothing to criticize.

God | Grace | Life | Life | Merit | Nothing | Wonder | God |

Saint Vincent de Paul

Restlessness usually stems from pride and from being discontented with one's lot in life.

Action | Giving | Merit | Obedience |

Samuel Butler

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

Difficulty | Merit | Money | People | Will |

Samuel Butler

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Respect | Reverence | Superiority | Respect |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place.

Superiority |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Men | People | Superiority |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.

People | Superiority |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

Greatness | Influence | Light | Merit |

Sydney J. Harris

It is certain that nothing we have brings us happiness, but only what we are, what we feel about ourselves.

Superiority |