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

W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

No doubt exists that all women are crazy, it's only a question of degree.

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W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone

There is little difference in people but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

Law | Rest | Will |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

The Self, The Ego, and The Shadow operate in time and out of time. The ego operates almost exclusively in time. The Ego is the chief organ of Temporal Awareness.

Ability | Age | Enjoyment | Experience | Individual | Inspiration | Life | Life | Model | Mystery | People | Rest | Sense | Unique | Will | Work | Old |

W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.

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Walker Percy

How strange to think that you cannot pass along the discovery.

Future | Life | Life | Past | People | Present | Quiet | Rest |

W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

The effectiveness of education depends on adaptability to individual differences. Rigid syllabuses and lock-step teaching ignore the real forces in the mind that make for development and learning and the resentment of the gifted when drill continues after a skill has been learned is very often evident. The problem is how to get practice of necessary skills without causing such resentment, a problem often neglected by some modern mathematics' reformers.

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Walker Percy

Tell me something. Why did I have to know the truth about Margot and know it with absolute certainty? Or rather why, knowing the truth, did I have to know more, prove more, see? Does one need to know more, ever more and more, in order that one put off acting on it or maybe even not act at all?

God | Rest | God |

W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith

The belief, the try, a camera and some film - the fragile weapons of my good intentions. With these I fought war.

Compassion | Enough | Important | Rest | Right | Sense | Understanding |

Wallace Stevens

If the study of his images is the study of man, this image of Saturday, this Italian symbol, this southern landscape, is like a waking, as in images we awake, within the very object that we seek, participants of its being.

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Wallace Stevens

To lose sensibility, to see what one sees, as if sight had not its own miraculous thrift, to hear only what one hears, one meaning alone, as if the paradise of meaning ceased to be paradise, it is this to be destitute.

Family | People | Poverty | Rest | Work | Worry | Old |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.

Change | Fallacy | Rest |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

If I were not perfectly sure of my power to write and of my marvelous ability to express ideas with the utmost grace and vividness... So, more or less, I had thought of beginning my tale.

Little | Rest |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future.

Failure | Learning | Man | Rest | Failure |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

My angel, oh my angel, perhaps our whole earthly existence is now but a pun to you, or a grotesque rhyme, something like dental and transcendental (remember?), and the true meaning of reality, of that piercing term, purged of all our strange, dreamy, masquerade interpretations, now sounds so pure and sweet that you, angel, find it amusing that we could have taken the dream so seriously (although you and I did have an inkling of why everything disintegrated at one furtive touch-- words, conventions of everyday life, systems, persons-- so, you know, I think laughter is some chance little ape of truth astray in our world.

Advice | Critic | Distinguish | Means | Mediocrity | Rest | Learn |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Rest |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone.

Battle | Books | Growth | Life | Life | Loafing | Man | Mind | Obsession | Pleasure | Rest | Science | Search | Struggle | World | Old |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.

Enemy | Good | Rest |

Vimala Thakar

But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves.

Behavior | Change | Compassion | Design | Focus | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Motives | Need | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Society | System | Will | Society |

Vimala Thakar

We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us.

Beauty | Darkness | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nothing | Peace | People | Rest | Suffering | Universe | Wonder | World | Beauty |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The first who was king was a fortunate soldier who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

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