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

George Matthew Adams

One reason why men and women lose their heads so often is that they use them so little!... The more the mind is used the more flexible it becomes, and the more it takes upon itself new interests.

Little | Men | Mind | Reason | Wisdom |

Yitzchok Waldshein

To have peace of mind it is important that the place where you live and work is organized and clean.

Character | Important | Mind | Peace | Work |

Sherwood Anderson

The whole object of education is, or should be, to develop mind. The mind should be a thing that works. It should be able to pass judgment on events as they arise, make decisions.

Education | Events | Judgment | Mind | Object | Wisdom |

Elizabeth Anscombe, fully Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret "G. E. M." Anscombe

You cannot take any performance (even an interior performance) as itself an act of intention; for if you describe a performance, the fact that it has taken place is not a proof of intention; words for example may occur in somebody’s mind without his meaning them. so intention is never a performance in the mind, though in some matters a performance in the mind which is seriously meant may make a difference to the correct account of the man’s action - e.g., in embracing someone. But the matters in question are necessarily ones in which outward acts are ‘significant’ in some way.

Action | Example | Intention | Man | Meaning | Mind | Question | Wisdom | Words |

John Winthrop

We must be knit together in this work as one man; we must entertain each other in brotherly affection; we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together; always having before our eyes our commission and community as members of the same body.

Body | Character | Commerce | Gentleness | Labor | Man | Meekness | Mourn | Patience | Work | Commerce |

Yechiel Michel Tukatinsky

Awareness of the inevitability of death need not cause sadness. Rather we can use it to destroy the common worries about inconsequential aspects of life. Many worries are over matters that have no lasting value. When you overcome worry, your mind will be free to think of your ultimate goals in life.

Awareness | Cause | Character | Death | Destroy | Goals | Life | Life | Mind | Need | Sadness | Will | Worry | Think |

Avraham Yellin

Keep in mind that we are in this world for a very short time and the things that upset us are of minor importance in the entire scheme of the universe.

Character | Mind | Time | Universe | World |

John Anster, fully John Martin Anster

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.

Boldness | Genius | Magic | Mind | Power | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

Mind | Wisdom |

William Wordsworth

I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean of the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man - a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.

Character | Joy | Light | Man | Mind | Sense | Spirit | Thinking | Thought |

Zeno of Citium NULL

One should seek virtue for its own sake and not from hope or fear, or any external motive. It is in virtue that happiness consists, for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.

Character | Fear | Hope | Life | Life | Mind | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |

Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani

What is the meaning of life? The meaning may not be expressed in words. It transcends the mind and the intellect. The meaning is to be experienced, realized... It is open to everyone who would live according to certain disciplines... The discipline of duty. Life is a field of duty, not a dance of desires... The discipline of service... We are here to help others... The opposite of love is not hate but apathy... The discipline of silence... The meaning of life is to love God and to give the service of love to the suffering children of God. And to the birds and animals who are God’s children as well.

Apathy | Character | Children | Discipline | Duty | God | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Service | Silence | Suffering | Words | God |

David Malet Armstrong, aka D. M. Armstrong

Beliefs about particular matters of fact (including beliefs whose content is an unrestricted existentially quantified proposition) are structures in the mind of the believer which represent or ‘map’ reality, including the believer’s own mind and belief-states. The fundamental representing elements and relations of the map represent the sorts of thing they represent because they spring from capacities of the believer to act selectively towards things of that sort.

Belief | Mind | Reality | Wisdom |

William Warburton

Of all exercises there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.

Character | Heart | Imagination | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Understanding | Wisdom |

Catharine Trotter Cockburn

Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature.

Character | Desire | Happy | Human nature | Justice | Man | Nature | Reason | Religion | Right | Self | Self-interest | Teach | Happiness |