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

William Shakespeare

O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!

Endurance | God | Good | Hell | Life | Life | Man | Past | People | Quiet | Scholar | Sin | Thinking | God |

William Shakespeare

Open as day for melting charity.

Change | Love | Perfection |

William Shakespeare

O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Art | Life | Life | Nature | Patience | Reason | Art |

William Shakespeare

O, that the slave had forty thousand lives; one is too poor, too weak for my revenge.

Counsel | Life | Life | Counsel |

William Shakespeare

Old father antic the law.

Change |

William Shakespeare

Our court you know is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain, A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain; One who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony; A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.

Life | Life |

Edwin Arlington Robinson

We are young and we are friends of time.

Change | Time | Will |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart.

Beauty | Change | Men | Precept | Style | Tradition | Trifles | Will | Beauty |

Sejong the Great, aka King Sejong, family name Yi, given name Do NULL

How could a king who should rule over all people and all things in the country with impartiality treat those of low birth any differently from the way he treats others?

Hope | Life | Life | People | Sympathy |

Dong Zhongshu, aka Dǒng Zhòngshū or Tung Chung-shu

Regular and irregular natural events contain symbolic politico-cosmic meaning

Life | Life |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Every style formed elaborately on any model must be affected and straight-laced.

Change | Mind | Study | Thought | Thought |

Edwin Percy Whipple

The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.

Life | Life |

Edward Scribner Ames

It may be said that the supreme revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ and that all the rest of the Bible leads up to him. Yet there are two ways of accepting the words and example of Jesus. One is to take what he says as true because he says it, and another is to believe it because it stands the test of reflection and experience. When his way of life has been confirmed by the demands of intelligence and of practical life, it has gained the deepest security and made its strongest claims upon our loyalty.

Association | Change | Divinity | Ideas | Life | Life | Nature | People | Psychology | Sense | Sin | Strength | Association |

Edwin Percy Whipple

What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make.

Avarice | Folly | History | Life | Life | Time |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

The Way of husband and wife is intimately connected with Yin and Yang [these are the two basis elements of the Universe: Yin, the soft yielding feminine element, and Yang the hard aggressive male element. Every substance contains both elements in varying proportions]. And relates the individual to gods and ancestors. Truly it is the great principle of Heaven and Earth, and the great basis of human relationships. Therefore the "Rites" [The Classic of Rites] honor union of man and woman; and in the "Book of Poetry" [The Classic of Odes] the "First Ode" manifests the principle of marriage. For these reasons the relationships cannot but be an important one.

Leisure | Life | Life | Time | Will | Think |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. - They create an ideal character the perfections of which compensate in some degree for imperfections of their own.

Immortality | Instinct | Life | Life | Words |

Edward Scribner Ames

Nothing yet proves that continued progress is inevitable, but that it is possible no one but an extreme skeptic or pessimist can doubt.

Bible | Example | Intelligence | Life | Life | Reflection | Rest | Revelation | Security | Words | Bible |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

Now examine the gentlemen of the present age. They only know thar wives must be controlled, and that the husband's rules of conduct manifesting his authority must be established. They therefore teach their boys to read books and study histories. But they do not in the least understand that husbands and masters must also be served, and that the proper relationship and the rites should be maintained. Yet only to teach men and not to teach women -- is that not ignoring the essential relation between them? According to the "Rites," it is the rule to begin to teach children to read at the age of eight years, and by the age of fifteen years they ought then to be ready for cultural training. Only why should it not be that girls' education as well as boys' be according to this principle?

Disgrace | Life | Life | Reputation | Woman |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

To choose her words with care; to avoid vulgar language; to speak at appropriate times; and nor to weary others with much conversation, may be called the characteristics of womanly words.

Evil | Life | Life | Maxims | Respect | Rites | Woman | Respect |

Hu Shih, or Hú Shì

No student of Chinese history can say that the Chinese are incapable of religious experience, even when judged by the standards of medieval Europe or pious India.

Life | Life | Religion |