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

Hugh Walpole, fully Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to life in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not over anxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibility; that gives you tranquillity without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.

Capacity | Character | Complacency | Consciousness | Earth | Life | Life | Materialism | Tranquility | World | Happiness |

Yechiel Michel Tukatinsky

The physical loss is not sufficient for mourning. Purely on a physical level what would a person gain if he lived many more years? What is the ultimate gain in devouring hundreds more chickens and thousands more loaves of bread? What is the overall difference if the deceased left all this to others? The Torah obligates us to mourn to emphasize the loss of the true value of life; which is the spiritual elevation a person could have gained if he were still alive. The Almighty placed him on this earth for this purpose. The person’s death should remind the mourners to fill their lives with the spiritual growth that they are capable of.

Character | Death | Earth | Growth | Life | Life | Mourn | Mourning | Purpose | Purpose | Loss | Torah | Value |

Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

I think the enemy is here before us... I think the enemy is simple selfishness and compulsive greed... I think he stole our earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and ravaged and despoiled our home land.

Character | Earth | Enemy | Greed | Land | Selfishness | Wealth | Think |

Gamaliel Bailey

Any heart turned God-ward, feels more joy in one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised by all the feasts on earth since its foundation.

Earth | God | Heart | Joy | Prayer | Wisdom |

Bacchylides NULL

No man on earth is lucky in all things.

Earth | Man | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Earth | Heaven | Life | Life | Object | Play | Wisdom |

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

To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.

Earth | Heaven | Ideas | Object | Wisdom |

Talbot Wilson Chambers

As the bosom of earth blooms again and again, having buried out of sight the dead leaves of autumn, and loosed the frosty bands of winter; so does the heart, in spite of all that melancholy poets write, feel many renewed springs and summers. It is a beautiful and a blessed world we live in, and whilst that life lasts, to lose the enjoyment of it is a sin.

Earth | Enjoyment | Life | Life | Melancholy | Sin | Wisdom | World | Blessed |

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 |

Chilon of Lacedemon NULL

Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal.

Earth | Famous | Men | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Robert Collier

There is nothing on earth you cannot have - once you have mentally accepted the fact that you can have it.

Earth | Nothing | Wisdom |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.

Earth | Man | Organic | Rule | Wisdom |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |