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

Lame Deer, fully John Fire Lame Deer, aka The Old Man, born Tȟáȟča Hušté

Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don’t use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don’t use the knowledge of the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere - a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big, empty hole which they find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It’s a quick comfortable superhighway, but I know where it leads to. I’ve seen it. I’ve been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it.

Dreams | Knowledge | Spirit | Vision | Waiting | Wisdom | Think |

Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature - compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.

Compassion | Distinguish | Enthusiasm | Human nature | Nature | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

There are never in nature two beings which are exactly alike.

Nature | Wisdom |

V. C. Kitchen, fully Victor C. Kitchen

In the business of life, Man is the only product. And there is only one direction in which man can possibly develop if he is to make a better living or yield a bigger dividend to himself, to his race, to nature or to God. He must grow in knowledge, wisdom, kindliness and understanding.

Better | Business | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Race | Understanding | Wisdom | Business |

Lactantius, fully Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius NULL

The mind is guilty of adultery even if it merely pictures to itself a vision of carnal pleasure.

Adultery | Mind | Pleasure | Vision | Wisdom | Guilty |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up the "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

Man | Nature | Present | Wisdom |

Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals.

Birth | Body | Death | Nature | Soul | Wisdom |

John Locke

The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Display | Knowledge | Mankind | Nature | Principles | Religion | Revelation | Wisdom |

Nancy Gentile Ford

War is no more inevitable than the plague is inevitable. War is no more a part of human nature than the burning of witches is a human act.

Human nature | Inevitable | Nature | War | Wisdom |

Jacques Maritain

Freedom of investigation is a fundamental natural right, for man’s very nature is to seek the truth.

Freedom | Man | Nature | Right | Truth | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.

Life | Life | Man | Nature | Wisdom |

Kyriacos C. Markides

It is the limitation of our awareness that would classify certain phenomena or abilities as metaphysical. Our awareness about what Nature is all about is grossly limited. Whatever is outside these limitations we tend to call metaphysical and then define as something beyond the scope of science and reason.

Awareness | Nature | Phenomena | Reason | Science | Wisdom | Awareness |

Lucan, full name Marcus Annaeus Lucanus NULL

How little nature demands. Running water and bread are enough for mankind.

Enough | Little | Mankind | Nature | Wisdom |

Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL

Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.

Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |

Ambroise de Lombez, Jean de La Peyrie, aka Brother Ambrose, Father Ambrose of Lombez the Enlightenment

By sadness you destroy the divine image in your soul. God is joy. All nature rejoices in him, and would you be sad? A true joy makes the heart fear God.

Destroy | Fear | God | Heart | Joy | Nature | Sadness | Soul | Wisdom | God |

George Brossin Méré, chevalier de

Beauty is the first present Nature gives to women, and the first it takes away.

Beauty | Nature | Present | Wisdom |