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

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best explanations or apologies for wrong ones in the past; the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.

Character | Evidence | Future | Past | Receive | Regret | Right | World | Wrong |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

The past is only memories; the future is but illusory hopes; focus on the present; for that is where your life really is; and it consists only of tests.

Character | Focus | Future | Life | Life | Past | Present |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion: a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.

Character | Discernment | Knowledge | Soul |

Francis Fane, fully Sir Francis Fane of Fulbeck

When the soul grants what reason makes her see, that is true faith, what’s more’s credulity.

Character | Faith | Reason | Soul |

Albert Einstein

It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

Character | Destiny | Individual | Rule | Soul |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

Henri Deterding, fully Henri Wilhelm August Deterding

The future belongs to those who are virile, to whom it is a pleasure to live, to create, to whet their intelligence on that of the others.

Character | Future | Intelligence | Pleasure |

Maria Edgeworth

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present; not only so, but, moreover, there is no moment at all, that is; no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards.

Character | Energy | Force | Future | Hope | Man | Present | Will |

John Dewey

To be being fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.

Character | Future | Present | Promise |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

Character | Impartiality | Soul | Will |

Thomas Crombie

No man is free who is not master of his soul and controller of his spirit.

Character | Man | Soul | Spirit |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!

Character | Earth | Silence | Soul |

Albert Einstein

Whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life.

Character | Life | Life | Soul |

Frederick Evan Crane

To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant.

Character | Devil | Future | Happy | Heart | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Work |

Demophilus NULL

Watch, for the idleness of the soul approaches death.

Character | Death | Idleness | Soul |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.

Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |

Y. Eibeschuetz

A person’s soul has a spark of divinity. Forgetting one’s lofty identity, one might pick up major faults and bad habits. Therefore remember at all times that you are a child of the great King and it is not befitting to act in a lowly and degrading manner.

Character | Divinity | Soul | Child |

Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando, born Joseph Marie Degérando, also Joseph-Marie de Gérando

Philosophers have very justly remarked that the only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; that the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions. That which they have said in regard to the intellectual faculties applies equally to the moral faculties. There is for the soul a spontaneous culture, on which depends all the real progress in perfection.

Character | Culture | Good | Perfection | Progress | Regard | Soul | Instruction |

Horatio W. Dresser

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Better | Character | Conduct | Day | Future | Life | Life | Thinking | Wise | World |