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

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

And a new philosophy emerged called quantum physics, which suggest that the individual’s function is to inform and be informed. You really exist only when you’re in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit.

Suffering | Wrong |

William Shakespeare

All surfeit is the father of much fast.

Events |

William Shakespeare

As fresh as morning dew distill'd on flowers.

Events | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Mourning | Order |

William Godwin

Either the nation whose tyrant you would destroy is ripe for the assertion and maintenance of its liberty, or it is not. If it be, the tyrant ought to be deposed with every appearance of publicity. Nothing can be more improper than for an affair, interesting to the general weal, to be conducted as if it were an act of darkness and shame. It is an ill lesson we read to mankind, when a proceeding, built upon the broad basis of general justice, is permitted to shrink from public scrutiny. The pistol and the dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue. To proscribe all violence, and neglect no means of information and impartiality, is the most effectual security we can have, for an issue conformable to reason and truth.

Force | Man | Mind | Office | Right | Sense | Suffering | Truth | Wrong |

William James

Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding on to.

Apology | Man | Suffering | Will | World |

William James

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper.

Events | Work | World |

William Gouge

Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.

Eternal | Fear | Good | Intention | Man | Salvation | Soul | Suffering | Will | Truths |

William Matthews

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

Men | Suffering | Happiness |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

For the credit of virtue it must be admitted that the greatest evils which befall mankind are caused by their crimes.

Fear | Justice | Love | Men | Suffering |

Douglas William Jerrold

There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.

Suffering |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

There are people who in spite of their merit disgust us, and others who please us in spite of their faults.

Events | Men |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

These, characteristically different from one another and variously modified by the gunas, present to the intellect (buddhi) the whole purpose of the Self (purusha), illumining it like a lamp.

Experience | Nature | Pain | Self | Suffering |

Edwin Way Teale

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

People | Suffering | World |

Ge Hong, courtesy name Zhichuan, aka Gě Hóng and Ko Hung

Ingesting divine cinnabar will make your lifespan inexhaustible. You will last as long as heaven and earth, be able to travel on clouds and ride dragons, and ascend at will to the Heaven of Highest Clarity

Events |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

Martyrs | Suffering | Tears |

Elihu Root

When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

Better | Character | Evil | Folly | Government | Ignorance | Indifference | Indolence | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Responsibility | Suffering | Time | World | Wrong | Government |

Albert Einstein

Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.

Events | Research | Will |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.

Addiction | Blame | Good | Irony | Looks | Love | Object | Obsession | Soul | Suffering |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite...

Chance | Divinity | Earth | Experience | Life | Life | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Search | Suffering |