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

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities. But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money.

Commerce | Humanity | Money | Nations | Peace | People | Spirit | Wisdom | Commerce |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality, and when each citizen would fain to be upon a level with those whom he has chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the judges.

Democracy | Equality | Extreme | People | Power | Spirit | Wisdom |

C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills

As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

Conduct | Force | Life | Life | Piety | Religion | Rhetoric | Sensibility | Spirit | Wisdom | World | Worship |

Martin Opitz, fully Martin Opitz von Boberfeld

It is not the variegated colors, the cheerful sounds, and the warm breezes which enliven us so much in spring; it is the quiet prophetic spirit of endless hope, a presentiment of many happy days, the anticipation of higher everlasting blossoms and fruits, and the secret sympathy with the world that is developing itself.

Anticipation | Happy | Hope | Quiet | Spirit | Sympathy | Wisdom | World |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our powers of judgment are more completely exposed by being overpraised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Blame | Conscience | Judgment | Praise | Reason | Wisdom |

William Penn

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue: it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.

Body | Folly | Mind | Rest | Silence | Sin | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Alex Faickney Osborn

Creativity is a flower that praise brings to bloom, but discouragement often nips in the bud.

Creativity | Praise | Wisdom |

Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL

It is not merely the multiplicity of tints, the gladness of tone, or the balminess of the air which delight in the spring; it is the still consecrated spirit of hope, the prophecy of happy days yet to come; the endless variety of nature, with presentiments of eternal flowers which never shall fade and sympathy with the blessedness of the ever-developing world.

Blessedness | Eternal | Happy | Hope | Nature | Prophecy | Spirit | Sympathy | Wisdom | World |

Theodore Roethke

The self says, I am; the heart says, I am less; the spirit says, you are nothing.

Heart | Nothing | Self | Spirit | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.

Dependence | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Servitude | Spirit | Tyranny | Wisdom |

Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

Hunger is a cloud out of which falls a rain of eloquence and knowledge; when the belly is empty, the body becomes spirit; when it is full, the spirit becomes body.

Body | Hunger | Knowledge | Spirit | Wisdom |

Samuel Sandmel

More people praise the Bible than read it, more read it than understand it, and more understand it than follow it.

Bible | People | Praise | Wisdom | Bible | Understand |

Karl von Schmidt

The form of government is unimportant - the spirit everything.

Government | Spirit | Wisdom | Government |

Albert Schweitzer

By the spirit of the age... the man of today is forced into skepticism about his own thinking, in order to make him receptive to truth which comes to him from authority... Truth taken over by skepticism which has become believing... is not capable of uniting itself with him to the very marrow of his being.

Age | Authority | Man | Order | Skepticism | Spirit | Thinking | Truth | Wisdom |