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

Tatjana Patitz

I believe that being true to the self is the most important thing in life - to have a free heart, a pure soul and a pure mind. We all live, or should live, for the fulfillment of the self. We are all mirror images of each other; whatever we feel in ourselves we feel in others. I believe that we create our own lives... Intuition should play the main role in everything we do. Through the creative source of the mind and the unlimited power of the spirit all our deepest wishes come true. For me the meaning is that we are all one, and the only true reality is the spirit. Believing in the power of spirit is simply to have a passion for life, to learn, to grow, to evolve and most of all to love, and live each day and each moment of the day to the fullest.

Character | Day | Fulfillment | Heart | Important | Intuition | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Passion | Play | Power | Reality | Self | Soul | Spirit | Wishes |

Alexander Pope

Thus education forms the common mind: just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.

Character | Education | Mind |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things. The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature, the use we learn to make of this growth is the education of men, what we gain by our experience of our surroundings is the education of things. Thus we are each taught by three masters. If their teaching conflicts, the scholar is ill-educated and will never be at peace with himself; if their teaching agrees, he goes straight to his goal, he lives at peace with himself, he is well-educated.

Character | Education | Experience | Growth | Men | Nature | Peace | Scholar | Will | Learn |

Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | Serenity | Spirit |

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

To attain excellence in society, an assemblage of qualification is requisite: disciplined intellect, to think clearly, and to clothe thought with propriety and elegance; knowledge of human nature, to suit subject to character; true politeness, to prevent giving pain; a deep sense of morality, to preserve the dignity of speech; and a spirit of benevolence, to neutralize its asperities, and sanctify its powers.

Benevolence | Character | Dignity | Elegance | Excellence | Giving | Human nature | Knowledge | Morality | Nature | Pain | Sense | Society | Speech | Spirit | Thought | Excellence | Think | Thought |

Samuel Smiles

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

Character | Growth | Individual | Self | Spirit | Strength |

Felix Schelling, fully Felix Emmanuel Schelling

True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius, for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.

Character | Education | Genius | Individual | Individuality | Inequality | Mediocrity | Progress | Standardization | Success | Superiority | World |

Robert Southey

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.

Absolute | Character | Contentment | Immortality | Man | Nature | Rest | Spirit |

Peter Sterry

Didst thou every descry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of time? Didst thou ever see a bright infinite in the narrow point of an object? Then thou knowest what spirit means - the spire-top, whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit contented in an unfathomed Depth of Life.

Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Means | Object | Spirit | Time |

John Sterling

The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that.

Better | Character | Education | Self | Self-denial | Wisdom |

Sufi Proverbs

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.

Character | Heart | Spirit |