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

Honoré de Balzac

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

Art | History | Humanity | Novels | Passion | Religion | Wisdom | Art |

Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones

Life itself is the expression of evolution... Everything that exists is merely matter in motion. In the same way, perfection is always a temporary relative motion. Humanity is relative... We are at such a low expression of consciousness that we have not yet seriously studied ourselves... Development is circular... Everything is constantly moving at higher, faster, more refined, complex levels of being... We will be here as quantitative motion until we reach a state of motion that is qualitative, revolutionary. Then we will be somewhere else!

Consciousness | Evolution | Humanity | Life | Life | Perfection | Will | Wisdom |

J. Beaumont

Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression.

Age | Childhood | Courage | Extreme | Ignorance | Man | Men | Nothing | Old age | Oppression | Will | Wisdom | Old |

Eric Bentley

Ours is the age of substitutes; instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.

Age | Ideas | Language | Principles | Wisdom |

Joe Bayly, fully Joseph Tate Bayly

In an age of the inconsequential and frivolous, reading fills our minds with the consequential. Reading involves stewardship of a mind, that was created in the divine image, to think great thoughts as well as to notice the small sparrow. Reading stretches the mind.

Age | Mind | Reading | Stewardship | Wisdom | Think |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Not years but experiences age us; hence man would be the unhappiest of creatures were he a diligent pupil of experience. That each new generation and each new era starts out from the cradle is what keeps mankind eternally young.

Age | Era | Experience | Man | Mankind | Wisdom |

William Cullen Bryant

Much has been said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.

Action | Age | Danger | Difficulty | Mankind | Old age | Power | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Wise | Old |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

If the memory is more flexible in childhood, it is more tenacious in mature age; if childhood has sometimes the memory of words, old age has that of things, which impress themselves according tot he clearness of the conception of the thought which we wish to retain.

Age | Childhood | Memory | Old age | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Old | Thought |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

Age | Enough | Family | Father | Isolation | Mother | Nature | People | Security | Wisdom | World |

Karl Bühler, fully Karl Ludwig Bühler

By the time the child can draw more that scribble, by the age of four or five years, an already well-formed body of conceptual knowledge formulated in language dominates his memory and controls his graphic work. Drawings are graphic accounts of essentially verbal processes. As an essentially verbal education gains control, the child abandons his graphic efforts and relies almost entirely on words. Language has first spoilt drawing and then swallowed it up completely.

Age | Body | Control | Education | Knowledge | Language | Memory | Time | Wisdom | Words | Work | Child |

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

The golden age never leaves the world; it exists still, and shall exist, till love, health, and poetry, are no more - but only for the young.

Age | Health | Love | Poetry | Wisdom | World |

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

In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body, and the over work of the brain. In this railway age the wear and tear of labor and intellect go on without pause or self-pity. We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more, from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles; we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.

Age | Body | Labor | Neglect | Pity | Self | Strength | Wisdom | Work | Intellect |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Age | Enjoyment | Life | Life | Old age | Wisdom | Youth | Old |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Action | Age | Events | Nature | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Nicholas-Edme Rétif or Restif, aka Rétif de la Bretonne

The heart of youth is reached through the senses; the senses of age are reached through the heart.

Age | Heart | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

Age | History | Knowing | Men | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Phoebe Cary

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

Age | Death | Heart | Soul | Wisdom |