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

Margaret Mead

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist - this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul - a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

Art | Day | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Music | Past | Play | Present | Soul | Art |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

We should be as careful of our words as of our actions, and as far from speaking ill as from doing ill.

Words |

Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute. He simply speaks and does what is right.

Man | Right | Words | Think |

Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL

Listen to a man's words and look at the pupil of his eye. How can a man conceal his character?

Character | Man | Words |

Ned Rorem

Music lasts by itself and cares not who composed it; nor can music recall the thousand anonymous fingers and mouths which tamper with it, beautifully or badly.

Music |

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.

Words |

Morris Raphael Cohen

Mere knowledge alone will not enable us to solve the profound problems of life... Sympathy is an essential part of a right attitude to the riddles of the universe. You must tune up your heart to catch the music of the spheres.

Heart | Knowledge | Life | Life | Music | Problems | Right | Sympathy | Universe | Will |

Nahmanides, aka Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym RaMBaN NULL

At the time of prayer, clear all worldly matters out of your heart; prepare your heart before God, blessed be He, purify your senses, and consider your words before you allow them to leave your mouth.

God | Heart | Prayer | Time | Words | Blessed |

Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

Why and how are words so important they cannot be too often used.

Important | Words |

Norman Vincent Peale

You should never entertain or express an idea unless you wish it to take form in your life... Thoughts and words can speak life or death to your future. Remember, lack thoughts and lack words tend to produce lack as fact.

Death | Future | Life | Life | Words |

Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

Let your talk be such as is worthy of belief, and your words such as are commonly used.

Belief | Words |

Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

Pleasant words are the food of love.

Love | Words |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Most people will go to their graves with their music still in them.

Music | People | Will |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Circumstances | Danger | Free speech | Man | Nature | Panic | Present | Question | Right | Speech | Will | Words | Danger |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Even while striving to improve yourself, learn to stand alone, secure in your own virtues and self-worth. If you want others to believe in you, remember, it isn’t only your words that have an effect, but what you are and what you feel within - what is in your soul.

Self | Self-worth | Soul | Words | Worth | Learn |

Plato NULL

Education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul.

Education | Harmony | Music | Soul |

Phyllis McGinley

Sticks and stones are hard on bones, aimed with angry art, words can sting like anything. But silence breaks the heart.

Art | Heart | Silence | Words |

Plato NULL

When a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul.

Life | Life | Man | Melancholy | Music | Passion | Play | Soul | Spirit | Waste |

Percy Bysshe Shelley

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe; and science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; and music lifted up the listening spirit until it walked, except from mortal care, Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound.

Care | Earth | Heaven | Listening | Man | Mind | Mortal | Music | Science | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Thought | Universe |

Philip James Bailey

The world is a great poem, and the world’s . The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.

Words | World |