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

Thomas Jefferson

In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.

Corruption | Cunning | Degeneracy | Earth | Government | People | Safe | Weakness | Wickedness | Will | Wisdom | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Earth | Events | God | Government | Mankind | Men | Nature | People | Respect | Right | Wisdom | Government | Respect | God | Truths |

Thomas Jefferson

The earth belongs to the living and not to the dead.

Earth | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole.

Earth | Exploit | Harmony | Man | Nature | Revolution | Right | Self | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Robert Leighton

Many afflictions will not cloud and obstruct peace of mind so much as one sin: therefore, if you would walk cheerfully, be most careful to walk holily. All the winds about the earth make not an earthquake, but only that within.

Earth | Mind | Peace | Sin | Will | Wisdom |

Elizabeth Klarer

In aging, the (one's) inner clock slows down while earth time remains constant. Your planet continues to move in three directions at the same time, giving to you your speed or flow of time, past, present and future. There is less time to do things as one grows older and time is speeded up because the living body processes are slowing down. Time is a wave-motion in a triple unity with light and gravity.

Body | Earth | Future | Giving | Light | Past | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom |

D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

Earth | Life | Life | Love | Mockery | Wisdom |

Rudyard Kipling

God gives all men, all earth to love.

Earth | God | Love | Men | Wisdom |

Rudyard Kipling

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;... If you can fill the unforgiving minute With Sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Dreams | Earth | Man | Wisdom | Worth | Think |

Cecil Day-Lewis, or Day Lewis

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

Earth | Good | Self | Wisdom |

Charles Kingsley

What right has any free, reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong?

Day | Earth | Man | Murder | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Wrong | Murder |

D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

The more we search for an alibi, the more we discover that unhappiness on earth is man-made.

Earth | Man | Search | Unhappiness | Wisdom |

Charles W. Landon

Music is God’s best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation.

Art | Cultivation | Earth | God | Heaven | Man | Music | Wisdom | Instruction | Art |

William M’Culloch

It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage; that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships that has give us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.

Barbarism | Comfort | Earth | Elegance | Labor | Man | Plenty | Wisdom |

Bernard M. Martin, D.D

To most people loneliness is a doom. Yet loneliness is the very thing which god has chosen to be one of the schools of training for His very own. It is the fire that sheds the dross and reveals the gold.

God | Gold | Loneliness | People | Training | Wisdom | God |

Marya Mannes

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future.

Abuse | Earth | Future | Kill | Revenge | Will | Wisdom |

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

The greatest security of the liberties of a people who do not cultivate the earth is their not knowing the use of money... The people who have no money have but few wants; and these are supplied with ease, and in an equal manner. Equality is then unavoidable; and hence it proceeds that their chiefs are not despotic.

Earth | Equality | Knowing | Money | People | Security | Wants | Wisdom |

Thomas Nashe

Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage.

Earth | Heaven | Wisdom |

Youssou N’Dour

The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow.

Deeds | Earth | Hope | Ideas | Innovation | Interdependent | Life | Life | Meaning | Pride | Respect | Time | Tomorrow | Tradition | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Deeds | Respect |