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

V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity, it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.

Appearance | Giving | Piety | Public | Old |

Valmiki NULL

It is difficult for the children to repay the debt of what the mother and the father have done to bring them up.

Giving | Heart |

Valmiki NULL

Once Rama gives his word, that is final and it is kept at any cost. There is no question of repetition of the same a second time.

Giving | Joy | Life | Life | Nothing | Prosperity |

Tryon Edwards

He who can suppress a moment's anger may prevent a day of sorrow

Courage | Giving | Good | Men | Resolution | Strength | Will | Wise |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Business | Desire | Giving | People | World | Business |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

Giving | Method | Mistake | Science |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

Giving | Pain | Understanding |

Thurgood Marshall

Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.

Control | Giving | Government | Power | Thought | Government | Thought |

Hugh Blair

Though Milton is most distinguished for his sublimity, yet there is also much of the beautiful, the tender, and the pleasing in many parts of his work.

Giving | Good | Improvement | Sensibility | Taste |

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal. The training of artists and creative performers can be a straightforward, almost mechanical process. When you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for experiencing more widely and richly.

Authority | Comfort | Giving | Question | Learn | Think |

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

We cannot study the brain, the instrument for fabricating the realities we inhabit, using the mental constructs of the past.

Better | Giving |

William Shakespeare

A glooming peace this morning with it brings; the sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: for never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Romeo and Juliet, Act v, Scene 3

Giving |

Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL

Only when faced with the activity of enemies can you learn real inner strength. From this viewpoint, even enemies are teachers of inner strength, courage, and determination.

Effort | Failure | Giving | Time | Failure |

William Morris

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.

Force | Giving | Good | Self | Sense |

William James

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not so.

Example | Giving | Reason |

William Morris

I have the utmost respect for them. It was formed at the time of great violence and danger, particularly for African-American lawyers.

Art | Destroy | Energy | Giving | Hope | Impulse | Labor | Work | Worth | Art |

William Morris

Let us speak, love, together some words of our story, that our lips as they part may remember the glory! O soft day, o calm day, made clear for our sake!

Dreams | Giving | World |

Drew Curtis

I love Sweden. The entire world should be like Sweden. They all like to drink and get naked, and the women are hot. I can't think of a better nation on the planet.

Argument | Giving | Guarantee | Judgment | Reality | Will |