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

David Hume

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the salve of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Office | Passion | Reason | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future.

Compassion | Experience | Freedom | Future | God | Growth | Intolerance | Joy | Observation | Past | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Truth | Wisdom | God | Value |

David Hume

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.

Reason | Wisdom | World |

Thomas Jefferson

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad... freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Age | Commerce | Freedom of religion | Freedom | Government | Justice | Men | Nations | Peace | Persuasion | Principles | Religion | Revolution | Rights | Trials | Wisdom | Friendship | Government |

Louis Johannot

The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents is because it helps me to forgive their children.

Children | Parents | Reason | Wisdom | Forgive |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The reason for the sublime simplicity in the works of nature lies all too often in the sublime shortsightedness in the observer.

Nature | Reason | Simplicity | Wisdom |

Rudyard Kipling

Nations have passed away and left no traces, And history gives the naked cause of it - One single simple reason in all cases; They fell because their peoples were not fit.

Cause | History | Nations | Reason | Wisdom |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten... America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice.

Debt | Determination | Greatness | History | Indispensable | Justice | Ugly | Will | Wisdom |

Leone Levi

Birth and death are like two ships in a harbor. There is no reason to rejoice at the ship setting out on a journey [birth], not knowing what she may encounter on the high seas, but we should rejoice at the ship returning to port [death] safely.

Birth | Death | Journey | Knowing | Reason | Wisdom |

William George Jordan

Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature. It can grow in any soil, live under any condition. It defies environment. The reason for this is that it does not come from without but from within. Whenever you see a person seeking happiness outside himself, you can be sure he has never found it.

Nature | Paradox | Reason | Wisdom | Happiness |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

As there is an infinite number of possible universes in the ideas of God, and as only one can exist, there must be sufficient reason for God’s choice, to determine him to one rather than to another. And this reason can only be found in the fitness, or in the degrees of perfection, which these worlds contain.

Choice | God | Ideas | Perfection | Reason | Wisdom |

Eugène Marin Labiche

Men become attached to us not by reason of the services we render them, but by reason of the services they render us.

Men | Reason | Wisdom |

Walter Savage Landor

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

Ambition | Distinguish | Prosperity | Wisdom | Ambition | Happiness |

Morris S. Lazaron, fully Morris Samuel Lazaron

The grandeur of natural order, man's pursuit of truth, his appreciation of beauty, his drive toward justice and holiness - it is all one... One God, one Mind, one Will, one Beauty, one Love.

Appreciation | Beauty | God | Justice | Love | Man | Mind | Order | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Appreciation |

John Locke

Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.

Appetite | Children | Curiosity | Knowledge | Reason | Time | Wisdom |

John Locke

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

Reason | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say - and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.

Man | Reason | Thinking | Time | Wisdom |