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

Morris Joseph

There is a freedom greater even than the freedom conferred by citizenship and the possession of full human rights. It is the freedom of the soul - of the soul that "walks at liberty because it has sought God's precepts," that visualizes the best and strenuously aspires after it. The greatest of boons has still to be attained.

Citizenship | Freedom | God | Liberty | Rights | Soul | Wisdom |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Soul | Wavering | Wisdom |

Francis "Frank" William Leahy

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Pain | Stupidity | Wisdom |

John Locke

God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts.

God | Pain | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Alexander Maclaren

My brother, you cannot forget your sins; but it lies within your own decision whether the remembrance shall be thankfulness and blessedness, or whether it shall be pain and loss forever.

Blessedness | Decision | Pain | Thankfulness | Wisdom | Loss |

John Locke

Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please... Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.

Consideration | Evil | Good | Joy | Mind | Power | Present | Sense | Sorrow | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man, nor has one passed away which he is unwilling to remember: the period of his life seems prolonged by his good acts; and we may be said to live twice, when we can reflect with pleasure on the days that are gone.

Cause | Day | Good | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.

Ignorance | Wisdom |

Margaret E. Mulac

Time is a man's most precious possession - his most precious commodity. To take a man's time, is to take a portion of his life. To give a man some of your time, is to give him a portion of yours.

Life | Life | Man | Time | Wisdom |

Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL

Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks; he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other.

Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Every step forward is made at the cost of mental and physical pain to someone.

Cost | Pain | Wisdom |

Peter Minard

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws form the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. The exodus from slavery toward the possession of the Kingdom.

Absence | Noise | Order | Peace | Silence | Slavery | Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.

Cause | Morality | Pain | Pleasure | Religion | Wisdom |

Louis Orr

Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.

Accomplishment | Beauty | Challenge | Insight | Laughter | Loneliness | Love | Nature | Pain | Science | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Friendship | Beauty | Value |

Joseph Parker

Remorse is the pain of sin.

Pain | Remorse | Sin | Wisdom |