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

Logan Pearsall Smith

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

Character | Life | Life | Mankind |

Robert Southey

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.

Absolute | Character | Contentment | Immortality | Man | Nature | Rest | Spirit |

Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Avarice | Character | Mankind | Vice |

Peter Sterry

Didst thou every descry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of time? Didst thou ever see a bright infinite in the narrow point of an object? Then thou knowest what spirit means - the spire-top, whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit contented in an unfathomed Depth of Life.

Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Means | Object | Spirit | Time |

George Stanley, fully George Francis Gillman Stanley

To live, mankind must recover its essential humanness and its innate divinity; men must recover their capacity for humility, sanity and integrity; soldiers and civilians must see their hope in some other world than one completely dominated by the physical and chemical sciences.

Capacity | Character | Divinity | Hope | Humility | Integrity | Mankind | Men | Sanity | World |

Sufi Proverbs

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.

Character | Heart | Spirit |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of healthy, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.

Character | Evil | Heart | Man | Rest | Sorrow | World | Loss |

John P. Webster

The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still.

Action | Body | Character | Man | Soul | Spirit |

John Greenleaf Whittier

There's life alone in duty done, and rest alone in striving.

Character | Duty | Life | Life | Rest |

George Matthew Adams

Tension is a killer! Just relax and note the immediate effect. One of peace and ease of mind. One in which every organ of the body joins. In relaxation there is unity of mind, body and spirit.

Body | Mind | Peace | Spirit | Unity | Wisdom |

Sherwood Anderson

I have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that.

Feelings | Good | Little | Mankind | Mystical | People | Wisdom | Think |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensures, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.

Body | Character | Day | Death | Man | Soul | Spirit | Woman |