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

Walter M. Germain

Negative thinking is depriving people of their natural birthright of health. It is the prime cause in shortening the lives of so many of us. And yet it is so simple to live a healthier, longer and so much happier life. We have only to recognize how God works His wonders through laws governing nature and "human nature."

Cause | God | Health | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | People | Thinking | Wisdom | God |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new.

Day | Good | Little | Men | People | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom | Words |

Zona Gale

The world consists almost exclusively of people who are one sort and who behave like another sort.

People | Wisdom | World |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.

Love | People | Receive | Wisdom |

William Ewart Gladstone

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Duty | Government | People | Right | Wisdom | Wrong | Government |

Mark Harris

We live in a spelling bee culture where the demand is factual accuracy and everybody overlooks the absence of art or meaning in what's said. Too many people sent letters to Nero telling him he was fingering his fiddle wrong. This passion for data is a way of avoiding coming to terms with things.

Absence | Accuracy | Art | Culture | Meaning | Passion | People | Wisdom | Wrong | Art |

Albert Goldrich

Some people speak as if hypocrites were confined to religion; but they are everywhere; people pretending to wealth when they have not a sixpence, assuming knowledge of which they are ignorant; shamming a culture they are far removed from adopting opinions they don't hold.

Culture | Knowledge | People | Religion | Wealth | Wisdom |

William Havard

The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children.

Children | Freedom | Glory | People | Wisdom |

Jascha Heifetz

Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.

Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Books | Ecstasy | Good | People | Reading | Remorse | Sorrow | Will | Wisdom |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern our modern literature and art are mostly so unreal.

Art | Events | Knowledge | Literature | Mind | People | Plenty | Science | Time | Wisdom | Trouble | Art | Understand |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

People | Present | Religion | Reverence | Soul | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whenever I hear people talking about "liberal ideas," I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Emotions | Ends | Ideas | Love | Men | Mission | People | Talking | Wisdom |

Jean Guéhenno, given name Marcel-Jules-Marie Guéhenno

To teach people to read without teaching them not to believe everything they read is only to prepare them for a new slavery.

People | Slavery | Teach | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people are satisfied with ornament.

Art | People | Wisdom | Art |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Listening | People | Wisdom |

Edith Hamilton

A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.

Day | Knowledge | Literature | People | Wisdom |