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

Jeremy Taylor

It is a great point of wisdom to hide ignorance, as to discover knowledge. To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Character | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Wisdom |

Ludwig Tieck, fully Johann Ludwig Tieck

He who considers himself a paragon of wisdom is sure to commit some superlatively stupid act.

Character | Wisdom |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!

Beauty | Character | Excellence | Hate | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Passion | Pleasure | Valor | Valor | Wisdom | Youth |

Robert Southey

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge as stubborn temper to happiness.

Character | Knowledge | Little | Mind | Temper | Wisdom |

Tze-sze NULL

To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge.

Character | Knowledge | Learning |

Jack C. Yewell

Giving of yourself, learning to be tolerant, giving recognition and approval to others, remaining flexible enough to mature and learn - yields happiness, harmony, contentment and productivity. These are the qualities of a rich life, the bounteous harvest of getting along with people.

Character | Contentment | Enough | Giving | Harmony | Learning | Life | Life | People | Qualities | Approval | Learn |

Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton

Human learning has often been an instrument, not a source, of hostility to religion.

Learning | Religion | Wisdom |

Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL

I thought all the while, I was leaning how to live, but now I know, I was learning how to die.

Learning | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Hotzoas Chochmah Umassar

The wise man knows his wisdom is limited, but the fool thinks he knows everything.

Character | Man | Wisdom | Wise |

Apocrypha NULL

The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.

Business | Leisure | Little | Man | Opportunity | Wisdom | Wise | Business |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

Tomorrow comes to us untarnished by human living. No human eyes have seen it and no one can tell what it is going to be. The Chinese word for tomorrow (mingtien) means "bright day." There is the wisdom of sages and the rapture of the poets in that image.

Day | Means | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Fred Astaire, born Frederick Austerlitz

The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.

Good | Learning | Manners | Wisdom |

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

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.

Eternal | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Amy Vanderbilt

When we learn to give thanks, we are learning to concentrate not on the bad things, but on the good things in our lives.

Character | Good | Learning | Learn |

Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.

Books | Character | Comfort | Destiny | Dignity | Ideas | Man | Mockery | Peace | Wisdom | Words | Work |