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

Bruce Bliven

Perhaps the most important lesson the world has learned in the past fifty years is that it is not true that "human nature is unchangeable."

Character | Human nature | Important | Lesson | Nature | Past | World |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

Since God hath always an eternal and present state, His knowledge, surpassing time’s notions, remaineth in the simplicity of His presence and, comprehending the infinite of what is past and to come, considereth all things as though they were in the act of being accomplished.

Character | Eternal | God | Knowledge | Past | Present | Simplicity | Time | God |

John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir

We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

Character | Debt | Future | Past |

Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork

In the past few decades American institutions have struggled with the temptations of politics. Professions and academic disciplines that once possessed a life and structure of their own have steadily succumbed, in some cases almost entirely, to the belief that nothing matters beyond politically desirable results, however achieved.

Belief | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Politics |

Jeremy Collier

By reading a man does, as it we, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with past ages.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Past | Reading |

Edward Watke, Jr.

The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness. Never both be angry at once. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire. Let each; one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly. Never taunt with a past mistake. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another. Never allow a request to be repeated. Never make a remark at the expense of each other, it is a meanness. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence. Never meet without a loving welcome. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness. Never forget the happy hours of early love. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home.

Absence | Absolute | Anger | Character | Cultivation | Day | Earth | Eternal | Fault | Forgiveness | God | Happy | Love | Marriage | Meanness | Mistake | Neglect | Past | Practice | Self | Self-denial | Wishes | Words | World | Fault | Happiness | Think |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.

Character | Death | Pain | Time |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

The past is only memories; the future is but illusory hopes; focus on the present; for that is where your life really is; and it consists only of tests.

Character | Focus | Future | Life | Life | Past | Present |

Euripedes NULL

Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind.

Character | Courage | Distinguish | Evil | Man | Means | Men | Mind | Poverty | Struggle | War | Wealth | Will | Witness | Teacher |

Melvin James Evans

The great scientific discoveries of the past hundred years have been as child's play compared with the titanic forces that will be released when man applies himself to the understanding and mastery of his own nature.

Character | Man | Nature | Past | Play | Understanding | Will |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Angels | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past |

Tyron Edwards

Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Character | Error | Future | Past | Success | Wisdom | Learn |

Elliot W. Eisner

We have inadvertently designed a system in which being good at what you do as a teacher is not formally rewarded, while being poor at what you do is seldom corrected nor penalized.

Character | Good | System | Teacher |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Action | Character | Good | Memory | Teacher |