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

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.

Chance | Genius | History | Madness | Nations | Ugly |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Greatness | Harm |

Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

Morally, the life of the organization must be of exemplary nature. This is one phase where the organization must not have criticism.

Greatness | Humility | Meekness | Qualities | Simplicity |

Vimala Thakar

We have moved very far away from love in our collective lives, dangerously near destruction, close to starvation. Perhaps we have the wisdom now, the awareness that love is as essential to human beings as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Love is the beauty, the delicate mystery, the soul of life, the radiant unspoiled purity that brings spontaneous joy, songs of ecstasy, poems, paintings, dances, dramas to celebrate its indescribable, never-to-be-fully-captured bliss of being. Can we bring love into the marketplaces, into the homes, the schools, the places of business, and transform them completely? You may call it a utopian challenge, but it is the only one that will make a significant difference or that is fully worthy of the potential of whole human beings.

Motives | Nations | People | Relationship | Wonder | Value |

Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

Romans, never forget that government is your medium! Be this your art:-to practice men in habit of peace, generosity to the conquered, and firmness against aggressors.

Nations | Peace | Rule | War |

François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.

Ceremony | Character | Death | Impression | Nations | Reason | Respect | Sacred | Respect |

François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

One can never be the judge of another's grief. That which is a sorrow to one, to another is joy. Let us not dispute with any one concerning the reality of his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries - each man has his own.

Change | Dawn | Doubt | Light | Looks | Men | Nations | Revolution | Thinking | Tomorrow | Will | World | Old |

Victor Hugo

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.

Greatness | Little | Man | People |

Victor Hugo

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

Democracy | Greatness | Nothing | Rights |

Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

A person who performs good Karma (deeds) is always held in high esteem.

Civilization | Culture | Deeds | Greatness | Language | Deeds | Happiness |

Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

A person who is respectful towards his land, civilization and language, attains greatness and he acquires all the happiness of life. His deeds should be such that makes the motherland, the culture and language proud.

Friend | Greatness |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money.

Death | Greatness | Little | Sound | Story | Woman |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response.

Accomplishment | Challenge | Chance | Circumstances | Failure | Greatness | Life | Life | Majority | Men | Opportunity | People | Words | Failure | Think |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Of him that sits, and him that walks, of him that stands and looks about, of these the eyes we do shut, just as these premises (are shut).

Children | Love | Nations |

Václav Havel

My only school was life itself.

Authority | Happy | Love | Nations |

Václav Havel

A modern philosopher once said: Only a God can save us now.

Action | Awareness | Greatness | Important | Awareness |

Václav Havel

I cannot make decisions about things it is not proper for him to decide. He is merely putting in a good word for genuine peace, and for achieving it quickly.

Character | Nations | Rights |

Václav Havel

Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.

Energy | Industry | Little | Nations |

Tryon Edwards

Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from Heaven, at our very doors.

Life | Life | Light | Nations | Rest |

Tryon Edwards

Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it.

Beauty | Genius | Greatness | Beauty |