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

Victor Hugo

He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out the plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of life which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.

Chance | Character | Day | Life | Life | Plan | Time | Will |

William James

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

Character | God | Life | Life | Nature | Words |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivises. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, popularity, vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may learn to cease from hating.

Dreams | Fear | Hate | Liberty | Popularity | Wisdom | Learn |

Phillips Brooks

You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty.

Duty | Existence | Fulfillment | God | Intelligence | Love | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Qualities | Righteousness | God |

John Maurice Clark

One of the besetting fallacies of reformers is the delusion that their plans will be carried out by people who think precisely as they do.

Delusion | People | Will | Think |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult; make something big by starting with it when small.

Accomplishment |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Does music make plants grow, or are there among the plans some that are musical?

Music |

David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz

Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans.

Belief | Goals | Ideas | Little | Size | Success | Think |

Arthur Schopenhauer

Instead of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been.

Future | Giving | Past | Present | Reality | Regret | Thinking |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

Those whose ways are different do not make plans together.

Denis E. Waitley

Successful individuals have game plans and purposes that are clearly defined to which they constantly refer.

Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

The wider the scope of my reflection on the present and past, the more I am impressed by their mockery of human plans in every transaction.

Mockery | Past | Present | Reflection |

Florence Nightingale

Since I was twenty-four there never was any vagueness in my plans or ideas as to what God's work was for me.

God | Ideas | Work |

Hannah More

The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion - makes the thought start into instant action, and at once plans and performs,

Action | Spirit | Thought | Thought |

Herbert Newton Casson

There is no Fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.

Action | Fate | Good | Men | Fate |

Jack Kornfield

One of the difficulties with our busy modern culture is that we don’t take time to listen to our hearts. Our immediate problems, our plans and thoughts, fill our minds and, lost in thinking, we lose our connection to our hearts and our true nature.

Culture | Nature | Problems | Thinking | Time |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

The most learned men have told us that only the wise man is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will? The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing has so much influence over him as his own counsel and decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that fortune is molded for each man by the manner of his life. Only the wise man does nothing against his will, or with regret and by compulsion. Thought this truth deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves.

Ability | Conduct | Counsel | Decision | Duty | Evil | Fear | Forethought | Fortune | Freedom | Good | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Nothing | Power | Regret | Right | Thought | Truth | Will | Wills | Wise | Counsel | Thought |

Napoleon Hill

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

Better | Ideas | Organization | Right | Time | Will | Work |

Napoleon Hill

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

Failure | Majority | Men | Persistence | Failure |