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

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Lord John Russell

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.

Man | Men | Wisdom | Wit |

Christian Scrivner, pseudonym Gotthold

If he who has little wit needs a master to inform his stupidity, he who has much frequently needs ten to keeping check his worldly wisdom, which might otherwise, like a high-mettled charger, toss him to the ground.

Little | Stupidity | Wisdom | Wit |

Sydney Smith

The essence of every species of wit is surprise; which, vi termini, must be sudden; and the sensations which wit has a tendency to excite are impaired or destroyed as often as they are mingled with much thought or passion.

Passion | Thought | Wisdom | Wit | Thought |

Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses - to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.

Imagination | Learning | Wisdom | Wit |

Sydney Smith

The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas that it is very deservedly driven out of good company.

Good | Ideas | Language | Wisdom | Wit |

Dhammapada NULL

By thoughtfulness, by restraint and self-control, the wise man may make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm.

Control | Man | Restraint | Self | Self-control | Wise |

Laws of Manu, Manava-dharma-sastra NULL

Let a wise man, like a driver of horses, exert diligence in restraint of his senses, straying among seductive sensual objects.

Diligence | Man | Restraint | Wise |

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Lord John Russell

[A proverb is] the wit of one man, the wisdom of many.

Man | Wisdom | Wit |

Ralph Waldo Trine

Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill.

Body | Desire | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Nature | Peace | People | Power | Practice | Quiet | Receive | Self | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wit | Following | Thought |

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Lord John Russell

A proverb is one man's wit and all man's wisdom.

Man | Wisdom | Wit |

Charles Caleb Colton

Reply with wit to gravity, and with gravity to wit. Make a full concession to your adversary; give him every credit for the arguments you know you can answer, and slur over those you feel you cannot. But above all, if he has the privilege of making his reply, take special care that the strongest thing you have to urge be the last.

Care | Credit | Wit | Privilege |

Charles Caleb Colton

Conversation is the music of the mind, an intellectual orchestra, where all the instruments should bear a part, but where none should play together. Each of the performers should have a just appreciation of his own powers, otherwise an unskillful novice who might usurp the first fiddle, would infallibly get into a scrape. To prevent these mistakes, a good master of the band will be very particular in the assortment of the performers; if too dissimilar, there will be no harmony, if too few, there will be no variety; and, if too numerous, there will be no order, for the presumption of one prater, might silence the eloquence of a Burke, or the wit of a Sheridan, as a single kettle-drum would drown the finest solo of a Gionowich or a Jordini.

Appreciation | Conversation | Good | Harmony | Mind | Music | Order | Play | Presumption | Silence | Will | Wit | Appreciation |

Edmund Burke

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for, (including) the want of sufficient restraint upon their passions.

Government | Men | Restraint | Right | Wants | Wisdom |

Edwin Markham

He drew a circle that shut me out- heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: we drew a circle that took him in.

Love | Wit |