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

Thucydides NULL

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.

Administration | Example | Excellence | Government | Justice | Law | Man | Obscurity | Obscurity | Poverty | Public | Reward | Rivalry | Excellence | Government |

Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness

If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.

Poverty | Wealth |

William James

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has been set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Better | Cowardice | Desire | Ends | Fear | Man | Poverty | Time | Wealth |

William Havard

Britain, the queen of isles, our fair possession secur'd by nature, laughs at foreign force; her ships her bulwark, and the sea her dike, sees plenty in her lap, and braves the world.

Poverty |

William Law

If parents should be daily calling upon God in a solemn deliberate manner, altering and extending their intercessions as the state and growth of their children required, such devotion would have a mighty influence upon the rest of their lives.

Life | Life | Poverty |

William James

The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, He can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the empyrean.

Civilization | Disease | Fear | Poverty |

William Law

We can all call to mind movements which have begun as pure upsurges of fresh spiritual vitality, breaking through and revolting against the hardened structure of the older body, and claiming, in the name of the Spirit, liberty from outward forms and institutions. And we have seen how rapidly they develop their own forms, their own structures of thought, of language, and of organization. It would surely be a very unbiblical view of human nature and history to think -- as we so often, in our pagan way, do -- that this is just an example of the tendency of all things to slide down from a golden age to an age of iron, to identify the spiritual with the disembodied, and to regard visible structure as equivalent to sin. We must rather recognize here a testimony to the fact that Christianity is, in its very heart and essence, not a disembodied spirituality, but life in a visible fellowship, a life which makes such total claim upon us, and so engages our total powers, that nothing less than the closest and most binding association of men with one another can serve its purpose.

Firmness | Grief | Life | Life | Perfection | Pious | Poverty | Pride | Strength | Weakness | Will |

William Morris

I know a little garden close Set thick with lily and red rose, where I would wander if I might from dewy dawn to dewy night. And have one with me wandering.

Counsel | Distinction | Greed | Hope | Knowledge | Leisure | Money | Poverty | War | Counsel |

William Shakespeare

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown When judges have been babes; great floods have flown From simple sources, and great seas have dried When miracles have by the greatest been denied. All's Well That Ends Well (Helena at II, i)

Man | Poverty | Think |

William Shakespeare

STEPHANO: Here; swear then how thou escapedst. TRINCULO: Swam ashore man, like a duck; I can swim like a duck, I'll be sworn. STEPHANO: Here, kiss the book. Though thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose.

Poverty |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true.

Poverty | Work |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

I believe, therefore, that the best way to make contact with the essential problem is by speaking of technology: economic development in poverty-stricken areas can be fruitful only on the basis of what I have called "intermediate technology." In the end, intermediate technology will be "labor-intensive" and will lend itself to the use of small-scale establishments

Life | Life | People | Poverty |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The power of ordinary people, who today tend to feel utterly powerless, does not lie in starting new lines of action, but in placing their sympathy and support with minority groups which have already started.

Consequences | Poverty | Talking | Technology |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.

Heart | Poverty | World |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

Men | Poverty | Child |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery.

Abundance | Death | Fault | Labor | People | Poverty | Struggle | System | Youth | Youth | Child | Fault | Old |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.

Beginning | Birth | Crime | Cruelty | Dawn | Ignorance | Poverty | Cruelty |

Gustave Flaubert

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

Enough | Poverty |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now.

Age | Control | Education | Need | Old age | Poverty | Slavery | World | Old |