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

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

Merit | Poetry | Will | Words |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

Merit | Nothing | Truths |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and dither falling in love, meeting together. It's true they are much less bound by ceremony, convention, than we are. Royal words meet with common words. English words marry French words, German words. Indian words, Negro words.

Change | Good | Hate | Merit | Will | Words | Worth | Think |

Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed, He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!

Care | Diligence | Merit |

Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

If heaven I cannot bend, then hell I'll stir.

Merit |

Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods.

Care | Courage | Little | Merit |

Victor Hugo

In short, between men and women you want.Equality. Equality! You can't mean it. Man and woman are two different creatures. I said equality. I didn't say identity.

Merit | Success |

Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

When a person is proper, he doesn’t have to give people orders and they will follow him of their own accord.

Merit |

Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

One may not carelessly scold those who study and practice the Buddha's teachings.

Chance | Merit | Will |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.

Law | Merit |

William Godwin

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

Merit |

William Law

Whilst you are divided betwixt God and the world, you have neither the pleasures of Religion, nor the pleasures of the world, but are always in the uneasiness of a divided state of heart. You have only so much Religion as serves to disquiet you, to show you a handwriting on the wall, to interrupt your pleasures, and to appear as a death's-head at all your feasts, but not Religion enough to give you a taste and feeling of its pleasures. You dare not wholly neglect Religion, but then you take no more than is just sufficient to keep you from being a terror to yourself, and you are as loth to be very good as you are fearful to be very bad.

Merit | Rule | Scripture |

William Law

There is no wrath that stands between God and us, but what is awakened in the dark fire of our own fallen nature; and to quench this wrath, and not His own, God gave His only begotten Son to be made man. God has no more wrath in Himself now than He had before the creation, when He had only Himself to love... And it was solely to quench this wrath, awakened in the human soul, that the blood of the Son of God was necessary; because nothing but a life and birth, derived from Him into the human soul, could change this darkened root of a self-tormenting fire into an amiable image of the Holy Trinity as it was at first created.

Happy | Joy | Kindness | Love | Merit | Rule |

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

Eloquence lies as much in the tone of the voice, in the eyes, and in the speaker's manner, as in his choice of words.

Merit |

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

The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.

Art | Merit | Play | Qualities | Reputation | Art |

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

There is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn: there is a silence of discretion and of respect.

Merit |