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

Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.

Perseverance |

Maria Montessori

If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist them to advance on the way to independence. It must initiate them into those kinds of activities which they can perform themselves and which keep them from being a burden to others because of their inabilities. We must help them to learn how to walk without assistance, to run, to go up and down the stairs, to pick up fallen objects, to dress and undress, to wash themselves, to express their needs in a way that is clearly understood, and to attempt to satisfy their desires through their own efforts. All this is part of an education for independence.

Education | Learn |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

Muhammed al-Taqī or Muhammad al-Jawād, given name Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Mūsā

Forebearence is the dress of a scholar, so do not get yourself undressed of it.

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.

Fear | Motives | Poverty | Space | Taste |

Nicolas Rowe

Religion's lustre is, by native innocence Divinely pure, and simple from all arts; You daub and dress her like a common mistress, The harlot of your fancies; and by adding False beauties, which she wants not, make the world Suspect her angel's face is foul beneath, And will not bear all lights.

Wants | Will |

Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.

Day | Dirty | Gold | Learning | Little | Praise | Recreation | Words | Work | Gossip |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Life seems such a tangible reality, and yet it is elusive. Every minute is precious. Today you are; tomorrow you are not. I remind myself of this every day. One by one we slip away. Others will come and we shall go. But the body is only a garment. How many times you have changed your clothing in this life, yet because of this you would not say that you have changed. Similarly, when you give up this bodily dress at death you do not change. You are just the same, an immortal soul, a child of God. Reincarnation means merely a change of mortal dress. But your real self will never change. You must concentrate on your real self, not on the body, which is nothing but a garment.

Body | Change | Death | Means | Mortal | Nothing | Self | Tomorrow | Will | Child |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

We may hold it slavish to dress according to the judgment of fools and the caprice of coxcombs; but are we not ourselves both when we are singular in our attire?

Judgment |

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God… it is you, matter, that I bless.

Plotinus NULL

That words, indeed, are not otherwise valuable than as subservient to things, must surely be acknowledged by every liberal mind, and will alone be disputed by him who has spent the prime of his life, and consumed the vigour of his understanding, in verbal criticisms and grammatical trifles. And, if this is the case, every lover of truth will only study a language for the purpose of procuring the wisdom it contains; and will doubtless wish to make his native language the vehicle of it to others. For, since all truth is eternal, its nature can never be altered by transposition, though by this means its dress may be varied, and become less elegant and refined. Perhaps even this inconvenience may be remedied by sedulous cultivation; at least, the particular inability of some, ought not to discourage the well-meant endeavours of others. Whoever reads the lives of the ancient Heroes of Philosophy, must be convinced that they studied things more than words, and that Truth alone was the ultimate object of their search; and he who wishes to emulate their glory and participate their wisdom, will study their doctrines more than their language, and value the depth of their understandings far beyond the elegance of their composition. The native charms of Truth will ever be sufficient to allure the truly philosophic mind; and he who has once discovered her retreats will surely endeavour to fix a mark by which they may be detected by others.

Elegance | Glory | Language | Means | Nature | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Study | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Wishes | Value |

Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.

Fear | People |

Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley

New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.

Better | People |

Samuel Butler

A News-monger is a Retailer of Rumour, that takes up upon Trust, and sells as cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable Commodity, that will not keep: for if it be not fresh it lies upon his Hands, and will yield nothing. True or false is all one to him; for Novelty being the Grace of bothe, a Truth grows stale as soon as a Lye.

Art | Attention | Little | Style | Art |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

Thomas Carlyle

A fair day's wage for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.

Existence | Man |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.

Thought | Thought |

Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

A Farmhouse on the Wei River - In the slant of the sun on the country-side, Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane; And a rugged old man in a thatch door Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy. There are whirring pheasants, full wheat-ears, Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves. And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders, Hail one another familiarly. ...No wonder I long for the simple life And am sighing the old song, Oh, to go Back Again.

Change | Doubt | Earth | God | Heart | Journey | Land | Love | Magic | Man | Nothing | People | Plan | Quiet | Reason | Search | Thinking | Time | World | God | Old | Think |

William Blake

You don’t believe—I won’t attempt to make ye: You are asleep—I won’t attempt to wake ye. Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams Of Reason you may drink of Life’s clear streams. Reason and Newton, they are quite two things; For so the swallow and the sparrow sings. Reason says ‘Miracle’: Newton says ‘Doubt.’ Aye! that’s the way to make all Nature out. ‘Doubt, doubt, and don’t believe without experiment’: That is the very thing that Jesus meant, When He said ‘Only believe! believe and try! Try, try, and never mind the reason why!’

Heart | Jealousy | Secrecy |