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

Tanhum ben Hanilai

A physician restricts the diet of only those patients whom he expects to recover. So God prescribed dietary laws for those who have hope of a future life. Others may eat anything.

Diet | Future | God | Hope | Life | Life | Wisdom | God |

Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

We cannot know as a matter of principle, the present in all its details.

Present | Wisdom |

E.H. (Edward Henry) Harriman, fully Edward Henry "Ned" Harriman

It is never safe to look in to the future with eyes of fear.

Fear | Future | Safe | Wisdom |

Heinrich Heine

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance; and, in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.

Appearance | Good | Love | Means | Nature | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The present moment is a powerful deity.

Present | Wisdom |

Gail Hamilton, Pseud. of Mary A. Dodge

There is generally no such thing as duty to the people who do it. They simply take life as it comes, meeting, not shirking its demands, whether pleasant or unpleasant; and that is pretty much all there is of it.

Duty | Life | Life | People | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Self knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but action. Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.

Action | Contemplation | Duty | Knowledge | Self | Will | Wisdom |

Huang Po, also Huángbò Xīyùn

On perceiving any individual's mind, you perceive all mind. Glimpse one truth, and all truth is present in your vision, for there is nowhere at all which is devoid of the Truth.

Individual | Mind | Present | Truth | Vision | Wisdom |

Washington Irving

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude… The love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul.

Affliction | Duty | Love | Solitude | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Thomas Hobbes

The end of worship amongst men is power. For where a man seeth another worshipped, he supposeth him powerful, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his power greater. But God has no ends: the worship we do him proceeds from our duty and is directed according to our capacity by those rules of honor that reason dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent men, in hope of benefit, for fear of damage, or in thankfulness for good already received from them.

Capacity | Duty | Ends | Fear | God | Good | Honor | Hope | Man | Men | Power | Reason | Thankfulness | Wisdom | Worship | God |

H. L. Hollis

The future holds something for the man who keeps his faith in it.

Faith | Future | Man | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

In the whole range of human vision nothing is more attractive than to see a young man full of promise and of hope, bending all his energies in the direction of truth and duty and God, his soul pervaded with the loftiest enthusiasm, and his life consecrated to the noblest ends. To be such a young man is to rival the noblest and best of men in heroic valor.

Duty | Life | Life | Man | Men | Nothing | Promise | Soul | Truth | Vision | Wisdom | World |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow.

Day | Little | Present | Wisdom |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

Wherever the right of property clashes with a duty toward humanity, the former has not credentials that are entitled to consideration.

Consideration | Duty | Humanity | Property | Right | Wisdom |

Theodore Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger

The soul has, living apart from its corporeal envelope, a profound habitual meditation which prepares it for a future life.

Future | Life | Life | Meditation | Soul | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

They change their sky not their mind who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us.

Change | Happy | Idleness | Life | Life | Mind | Object | Present | Search | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Seize the present; trust the future as little as you may... or... Sieze the day, with little trust in tomorrow (Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.)

Day | Future | Little | Present | Tomorrow | Trust | Wisdom |