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

H. B.

I live in the world, but I seem to myself not of it!.. Natural phenomena are but the shadows of the spirit form which they spring, as the human face changes under the influence of love, hatred or fear... When, O when, shall I be able to reveal its poetry? I see everywhere and in ever object unceasing motion, and in that motion a creative force forever and forever repeating and re-repeating the same simple process as to infinity. Through all nature the grand rhythms roll and heaven and earth are filled with the melody. Men are but boys chasing shadows. The spiritual significance of the world none seem to see - the infinite simplicity of its process are none care to understand.

Boys | Care | Character | Earth | Fear | Force | Heaven | Influence | Love | Melody | Men | Nature | Object | Phenomena | Poetry | Simplicity | Spirit | World |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Body | Character | Fame | Fortune | Judgment | Life | Life | Oblivion | Perception | Soul | Time |

Saul Bellow

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?

Art | Character | Heart | Indignation | Love | Man | People | Power | Rest | Soul | Art |

Norman O. Brown, fully Norman Oliver Brown

What education does is to put a series of filters over your awareness so that year by year... you experience less and less.

Awareness | Character | Education | Experience | Awareness |

Hugh Blair

Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe; we should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in selfish enjoyment. But we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human life, of the solitary cottage, the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

Amusements | Character | Cruelty | Distress | Enjoyment | Heart | Indulgence | Life | Life | Pain | Sympathy | Woe | Youth | Think |

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

Your greatness is measured by your kindness - Your education and intellect by your modesty - Your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices - Your real caliber is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others.

Character | Consideration | Education | Greatness | Ignorance | Kindness | Modesty | Intellect |

M. L. Boren

You should have education enough so that you won't have to look up to people; and then more education so that you will be wise enough not to look down on people.

Character | Education | Enough | People | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Robert Briffault, fully Robert Stephen Briffault

The full-grown modern human being who seeks but refuge finds instead boredom and mental dissolution, unless he can be, even in his withdrawal, creative. He can find the quality of happiness in the strain and travail only of achievement and growth. And he is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment which his life-urges demand when his is consumed in the service of an idea, in the conquest of the goal pursued.

Achievement | Character | Conquest | Fulfillment | Growth | Life | Life | Service | Happiness |

John Albert Broadus

All the sin that has darkened human life an saddened human history began in believing in a falsehood.

Character | Falsehood | History | Life | Life | Sin |

Hugh Blair

The prevailing manners of an age depend, more than we are aware of, or are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women: this is one of the principal things on which the great machine of human society turns.

Age | Character | Conduct | Manners | Society | Society |

Caroline Bird

A liberal-arts education is supposed to provide you with a value system, a standard, a set of ideas, not a job.

Character | Education | Ideas | System | Value |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster.

Absolute | Change | Character | Excitement | Human nature | Nature | Novelty | Resolution | Surrender | War |

Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun

The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.

Ability | Character | Love |

Eldress Harriet Bullard

Do good. This should be the aim of every human being, to make the world better for their having lived.

Better | Character | Good | World |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Everything is a succession of appearances whose source is the accumulation of causes and conditions.

Character |

William Blake

The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: 1. That man has two real existing principles; vis; a body and a soul. 2. That energy, called evil, is alone from body, and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. 3. That God will torment man in eternity for the following energies. But the following contraries to these are true: 1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is bound or outward circumference of energy. 3. Energy is eternal delight.

Age | Body | Character | Devil | Energy | Eternal | Eternity | Evil | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Principles | Reason | Sacred | Soul | Will | Following | God |