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

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man’s child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence.

Life | Life | Lying | Man | Possessions | Wisdom | Child |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical.

Art | Beauty | Contemplation | Mind | Sentiment | Wisdom | Witness | Work | Art | Beauty | Contemplation |

Henry George Bohn

There is nothing can equal the tender hours when life is first in bloom, when the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers, finds everywhere perfume; when the present is all and it questions not if those flowers shall pass away, but pleased with its own delightful lot, dreams never of decay.

Dreams | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Wisdom |

Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding

The future is bound to surprise us, but we don't have to be dumbfounded.

Future | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Future | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Children | Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina. The imagination is but the faculty of glassing images; and it is with exceeding difficulty, and by the imperative will of the reasoning faculty resolved to mislead it, that it glasses images which have no prototype in truth and nature.

Custom | Difficulty | Imagination | Judgment | Nature | Observation | Power | Precision | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Precision |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought.

Action | Books | Thought | Waste | Wisdom |

Geoffrey Chaucer

It is but waste to bury them preciously.

Waste | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

What is past is past. There is a future left to all men who have the virtue to repent, and the energy to atone.

Energy | Future | Men | Past | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

George Barrell Cheever

For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever present sense of humor; it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence.

Enjoyment | Faith | Health | Humor | Life | Life | Present | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery - into something that no mortal eye hath yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.

Intelligence | Mortal | Mystery | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

William Ellery Channing

He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a lifetime is unraveled.

Duty | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Geoffrey Chaucer

My mind to me a kingdom is; such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss that earth affords.

Earth | Mind | Present | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |