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

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.

Character | Wisdom | Old |

Phillips Brooks

It is better to inspire the heart with a noble sentiment than to teach the mind a truth of science.

Better | Character | Heart | Mind | Science | Sentiment | Teach | Truth |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

The wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

Character | Circumstances | Duality | Failure | Life | Life | Man | Spirit | Success | Truth | Wise |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

I am not collecting my knowledge from letters and books, but I have it within my own Self; because heaven and earth with all their inhabitants, and moreover God himself, is in man.

Books | Character | Earth | God | Heaven | Knowledge | Man | Self | God |

Claudius Buchanan

Every branch of knowledge which a good man possesses, he may apply to some good purpose.

Character | Good | Knowledge | Man | Purpose | Purpose |

Paul Bocuse

It is our duty to give meaning to the life of future generations by sharing our knowledge and experience; by teaching an appreciation of work well done and a respect for nature, the source of all life; by encouraging the young to venture off the beaten path and avoid complacency by challenging their emotions.

Appreciation | Character | Complacency | Duty | Emotions | Experience | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Respect | Work | Appreciation | Respect |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |

John Gardiner Brainard

Hate no one - hate their vices, not themselves.

Character | Hate |

Jean de La Bruyère

If one wishes to be esteemed, one must live with estimable people.

Character | People | Wishes |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Happiness follows sorrow, sorrow follows happiness, but when one no longer discriminates between happiness and sorrow, a good deed and a bad deed, one is able to realize freedom.

Character | Freedom | Good | Sorrow | Happiness |

Brahma-Vaivarta Purana NULL

Piety and selfless deeds elevate the inhabitants of this earth to exalted spiritual estates... self-serving acts reduce them to the realms beneath, of sorrow and pain, rebirths among birds and vermin, or out of the wombs of pigs and beasts of the wild, or among trees. Action is a function of character, which in turn is controlled by custom. This is the whole substance of the secret. This knowledge is the ferry across the ocean of hell to beatitude. For all the animate and inanimate objects in this world... are transitory, like dream. The gods on high, the mute trees and stones, are but apparitions in the fantasy. Good and evil attaching to a person are perishable as bubbles. In the cycles of time they alternate. The wise are attached to neither.

Action | Character | Custom | Deeds | Earth | Evil | Good | Hell | Knowledge | Pain | Piety | Self | Sorrow | Time | Wise | World | Deeds |

Thomas Brooks

When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger. A man had need to fear this most of all, that he fears not at all.

Character | Danger | Distrust | Fear | Man | Mother | Need | Security | Sense | Temptation |

Jean de La Bruyère

The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as there are people useful to his fortune.

Character | Fortune | Man | People |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Without knowledge there is no meditation, without meditation there is no knowledge: he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana.

Character | Knowledge | Meditation |