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

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Not by age but by character is wisdom attained.

Age | Character | Wisdom |

Andrew Preston Peabody

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

Character | Eternal | Ideals | Man | World | Truths |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

The rout and destruction of the passions, while a good, is not the ultimate good; the discovery of Wisdom is the surpassing good. When this is found, all the people will sing.

Character | Discovery | Good | People | Will | Wisdom | Discovery |

Maurice Nicoll

We live in a narrow reality, partly conditioned by our form of perception and partly made by opinions that we have borrowed, to which our self-esteem is fastened. We fight for our opinions, not because we believe them but because they involve the ordinary feeling of oneself. Though we are continually being hurt owing to the narrowness of the reality in which we dwell, we blame life, and do not see the necessity of finding absolutely new standpoints. All ideas that have a transforming power change our sense of reality.

Blame | Change | Character | Esteem | Ideas | Life | Life | Necessity | Perception | Power | Reality | Self | Self-esteem | Sense |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

The goal of wisdom is laughter and play - not the kind that one sees in little children who do not yet have the faculty of reason, but the kind that is developed in those who have grown mature through both time and understanding. If someone has experienced the wisdom that can only be heard from oneself, learned from oneself, and created from oneself, he does not merely participate in laughter: he becomes laughter itself.

Character | Children | Laughter | Little | Play | Reason | Time | Understanding | Wisdom |

Thomas W. Palmer

Learning, if rightly applied, makes a young man thinking, attentive, industrious, confident and wary; and an old man cheerful and useful. It is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, an entertainment at all times; it cheers in solitude, and gives moderation and wisdom in all circumstances.

Adversity | Character | Circumstances | Entertainment | Learning | Man | Moderation | Prosperity | Solitude | Thinking | Wisdom | Moderation | Old |

Abbé Raynal

The world is governed by three things - wisdom, authority, and appearance. Wisdom for thoughtful people, authority for rough people, and appearances for the great mass of superficial people who can look only at the outside.

Appearance | Authority | Character | People | Wisdom | World |

Paul Radin

No progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being.

Character | History | Ideas | Man | Progress | Will |

Francis Quarles

Knowledge descries; wisdom applies.

Character | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Gabriel Riesser

May those who represent advanced views bear in mind that true wisdom is always joined with mildness, that malice never converts the erring but strengthens him in his attitude, and that it is very unfitting to combat error (so long as this does not assume the aspect of injustice) with the weapons of hatred.

Character | Error | Malice | Mind | Weapons | Wisdom |

Charles Seymour

Consideration is not merely a matter of emotional goodwill but of intellectual vigor and moral self-sacrifice. Wisdom must combine with sympathy. That is why consideration underlies the phrase "a scholar and a gentleman," which really sums up the ideal of the output of a college education.

Character | Consideration | Education | Sacrifice | Scholar | Self | Self-sacrifice | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Arthur Schnitzler

I trust your wisdom only when it comes from the heart, your goodness when it comes from the mind.

Character | Heart | Mind | Trust | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.

Character | Men | Oblivion | Weakness | Wisdom | Old | Truths |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

Lessons of wisdom have never such power over us as when they are wrought in to the heart through the groundwork of a story which engages the passions.

Character | Heart | Power | Story | Wisdom |