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

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Experience is the universal mother of sciences.

Mother |

Milorad Pavić

Don't forget that your years are in pairs, as sisters, mother and daughter or sister and brother. And sometimes as stepfather and stepdaughter or lovers ... In order to meet the night all your nights as day, need to understand what a couple of years that are in your life.

Daughter | Mother | Need | Order | Understand |

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Kill | Mother | Nothing | Peace |

Morihei Ueshiba

Create each day anew by clothing yourself with heaven and earth, bathing yourself with wisdom and love, and placing yourself in the heart of Mother Nature.

Day | Heart | Heaven | Mother | Wisdom |

Mary Eliza Haweis, aka Mrs. Hugh R. Haweis, maiden name Mary E. Joy

The single woman's part in life may be a noble one; she may elevate herself and help others, but her's must always be a second place.—She is never fulfilling the part nature intended her to fulfil; but the wife and mother is the crowned queen.

Life | Life | Mother | Nature | Wife |

Morihei Ueshiba

To practice properly the Art of Peace, you must: Calm the spirit and return to the source. Cleanse the body and spirit by removing all malice, selfishness, and desire. Be ever grateful for the gifts received from the universe, your family, Mother nature, and your fellow human beings.

Art | Body | Mother | Practice | Spirit | Art |

Morihei Ueshiba

Crystal clear, Sharp and bright, The sacred sword Allows no opening For evil to roost. To practice properly the Art of Peace, you must: Calm the spirit and return to the source. Cleanse the body and spirit by removing all malice, selfishness, and desire. Be ever-grateful for the gifts received from the universe, your family, Mother Nature, and your fellow human beings.

Art | Body | Evil | Mother | Practice | Sacred | Spirit | Art |

Morihei Ueshiba

Those who practice the Art of Peace must protect the domain of Mother Nature, the divine reflection of creation, and keep it lovely and fresh. Warriorship gives birth to natural beauty. The subtle techniques of a warrior arise as naturally as the appearance of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Warriorship is none other than the vitality that sustains all life.

Appearance | Art | Birth | Mother | Peace | Practice | Reflection | Art |

Nahmanides, aka Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym RaMBaN NULL

Hear, my son, the instruction of your father and don't forsake the teaching of your mother (Mishlei 1:8). Get into the habit of always speaking calmly to everyone. This will prevent you from anger, a serious character flaw which causes people to sin... Once you have distanced yourself from anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart.This radiant quality is the finest of all admirable traits... so that you will succeed in all your ways. Thus you will succeed and merit the World to Come which lies hidden away for the righteous.

Character | Father | Habit | Humility | Merit | Mother | People | Will | World | Instruction |

Booth Tarkington, born Newton Booth Tarkington

Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there. If it's shown to the mother, the son has got an angel to show, hasn't he? When a son cuts somebody's throat the mother only sees it's possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil - and she's entirely right about that!

Devil | Mother | Right |

Nikola Tesla

Now, I must tell you of a strange experience which bore fruit in my later life. We had a cold [snap] drier than even observed before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail. [As I stroked] Mačak's back, [it became] a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks. My father remarked, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm. My mother seemed alarmed. Stop playing with the cat, she said, he might start a fire. I was thinking abstractly. Is nature a cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded. I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.

Day | Experience | Father | Light | Mother | Nature | Nothing | People | Thinking |

Nikola Tesla

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible; therefore I devoted the next few months to the study of this work. One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.

Ability | Cause | Energy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Mother | Observation | Order | Phenomena | Power | Reflection | Study | Truth | Will |

Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

Mother | Child |

Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich

The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children.

Mother | Woman |

Paulo Coelho

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own… Everyone when they are young knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible… Everything depends on which path you take… Everything in life has its price… Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow… Everything has changed; it's just that we can't see it… Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive... and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us.... we continue to change as change is the nature of man. No one is just this way. That is who they are today - it will not be who they are tomorrow.

Change | Destiny | Earth | Life | Life | Mother | Nature | Need | People | Tradition | Will | Teacher |