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

William Gilmore Simms

Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.

Body | Mind | Repose | Solitude | Wisdom |

Joseph Zabara, fully Joseph ben Meïr Zabara

Fear God by day, and you'll sleep soundly at night.

Day | Fear | God | Wisdom | God |

Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death.

Darkness | Death | Heart | Wisdom |

Edward Young

How many sleep who keep the world awake!

Wisdom | World |

G. W. F. NULL

[In memory of Dad] Do not stand by my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep – I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. Do not stand by my grave an cry. I am not there. I did not die.

Grave | Memory |

Francesco Guicciardini

Ambition is not a reprehdnsible quality, nor are ambitious men to be censured, if they seek glory through honorable and honest means. In fact, it is they who produce great and excellent works. Those who lack this passion are cold spirits, inclined towards laziness than activity. But ambition is pernicious and detestable when it has as its sole end power.

Ambition | Glory | Laziness | Means | Men | Passion | Power | Ambition |

Victor Hugo

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; when you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Courage | God | Life | Life | Patience | Peace | God |

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

The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusion in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.

Body | Day | Death | Good | Illusion | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nothing | Work | Think |

William Wordsworth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; the Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, hath had elsewhere its setting. And cometh from afar.

Birth | Life | Life | Soul |

Powhatan, proper name was Wahunsenacawh, also spelled Wahunsonacock NULL

Why will you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?... We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in friendly manner... I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and being their friend, trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may die in the same manner.

Better | Cause | Destroy | Force | Good | Love | War | Will |

Aristotle NULL

Soul is actuality in the sense in which knowledge is so, for the presence of the soul is compatible both with sleep and with waking, and waking is analogous to the exercise of knowledge… the soul is the first actualization of a natural body potentially having life.

Body | Knowledge | Life | Life | Sense | Soul |

Aristotle NULL

The soul is present with us as much while we are asleep as while we are awake; and, while waking resembles active observation, sleep resembles the implicit though not exercised possession of knowledge.

Knowledge | Observation | Present | Soul |

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

And now I would impart to you a secret - which is that of permanence. When you sleep your life is in abeyance; but it is likewise in abeyance when those eclipses of the heart befall you which are the causes of your weakness. For around you nothing is changed, yet all has changed within you.

Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Weakness |

Arthur Schopenhauer

Every day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Birth | Day | Death | Life | Life | Little | Rest | Youth |