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

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Your life belongs to you, not to the demands of others, and when you see this fully, their demands are powerless.

Duty |

Victor Hugo

Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood... In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life.

Duty | Enough | Men |

Victor Hugo

A social deformity perhaps still more hideous than the evil rich: the evil poor

Law | Light | Skeptic |

Victor Hugo

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing.

Battle | Cunning | Extreme | Law | Order | Vice |

Victor Hugo

To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.

Law | Sin |

Victor Hugo

It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.

Duty | Enough | God | Mystery | Religion | Work | Worship | God |

Victor Hugo

The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas.

Duty | Little | People | Rights | Sacred |

Victor Hugo

To love another person is to see the face of God

Duty | Ideas |

Victor Hugo

Suddenly finding such a secret in the midst of one's happiness is like the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.

Darkness | Law | Men | System | Waste |

Victor Hugo

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Discovery | Grace | Inspiration | Law | Spirit | Discovery |

Victor Hugo

Vast horizons lead the soul to general ideas; circumscribed horizons engender one-sided ideas.... General ideas are hated by one-sided minds: such is the struggle for progress.

Law |

Victor Hugo

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

Battle | Change | Law | Man | Time |

Victor Hugo

Work, which makes a man free, and thought, which makes him worthy of freedom.

Law |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is the duty of learned ones to ensure that the tribe of noble people keeps on growing. This they can do by means of proper guidance and tutelage.

Duty | Individual |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Move ahead. Give proper Nourishment to the body. May your hands,legs and body not be destroyed by death.

Heart | Law | Morality |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is urgent that everyone should inquire into the true, the pure and the permanent; for there is at present a delusion about values. Even the leaders of people are hugging the false hypothesis that happiness can be had by means of wealth or health, housing or clothing, or the cultivation of skills in handicraft and manufacture.

Duty | Happy | Husband | Money |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is the duty of the husband to earn money and fulfill the needs of his wife. It is also his duty to keep her happy and satisfied. He should protect her and fulfill all her demands.

Duty | Guidance | Means | People | Guidance |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Render every thought into a flower worthy to be held in His Fingers; render every deed into a fruit, full of the sweet juice of Love fit to be placed in His Hand; render every tear holy and pure, fit to wash His Lotus Feet.

Duty | Lord | Play |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

Custom | Duty | Time |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the seeing of Meshe, and are in his eye. We are the pupils of his Eye... Our doing is his Seeing: our being is his Knowing.

Evolution | Existence | Law | Strength |