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

Christopher Morley, fully Christopher Darlington Morley

The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Ideas | Man | Speech | Wisdom | World |

Max Picard

The world of silence without speech is the world before creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silenced truth is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake. Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence and gives it meaning and honor.

Honor | Language | Meaning | Silence | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | World |

Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

The direct speech of feeling is allegorical and cannot be replaced by anything.

Speech | Wisdom |

Francis Quarles

Silence is the highest wisdom of a fool as speech is the greatest trial of a wise man. If thou wouldst be known as wise, let thy words show thee so; if thou doubt thy words, let thy silence feign thee so. It is not a greater point of wisdom to discover knowledge than to hide ignorance.

Doubt | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Silence | Speech | Wisdom | Wise | Words | Trial |

Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly

Supporting the Equal Rights Amendment is like trying to kill a fly with a sledge hammer. You don’t kill the fly, but you end up breaking the furniture... We cannot reduce women to equality. Equality is a step down for most women.

Equality | Kill | Rights | Wisdom |

Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

In the faculty of speech man excels the brute; but if thou utterest what is improper, the brute is thy superior.

Man | Speech | Wisdom |

Charles Sumner

It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.

Rights | Wisdom |

William Howard Taft

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

Action | Majority | People | Respect | Rights | Self | Wisdom | Respect |

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

O guard thy roving thoughts with jealous care, for speech is but the dialplate of thought; and every fool reads plainly in thy words what is the hour of thy thought.

Care | Speech | Thought | Wisdom | Words |

Arthur Warwick

The speech of the tongue is best known to men; God best understands the language of the heart.

God | Heart | Language | Men | Speech | Wisdom | God |

Howel Walsh

A corporation cannot blush. It is a body, it is true; has certainly a head - a new one every year; arms it has and very long ones, for it can reach at anything... a throat to swallow the rights of the community, and a stomach to digest them! But who ever yet discovered, in the anatomy of any corporation, either bowels or a heart?

Blush | Body | Heart | Rights | Wisdom |

Lyall Watson

There are around half a million words in the English language, but a recent statistical study of telephone speech discovered that 96 percent of all conversation over the wires consists of just 737 words.

Conversation | Language | Speech | Study | Wisdom | Words |

Tiorio NULL

A man who neglects his duty as a citizen is not entitled to his rights as a citizen.

Duty | Man | Rights | Wisdom |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects that surround him, he is instinctively led to appropriate to himself everything that he can lay his hands upon; he has no notion of the property of others; but as he gradually learns the value of things and begins to perceive that he may in his turn be despoiled, he becomes more circumspect, and he ends by respecting those rights in others which he wishes to have respected in himself. The principle which the child derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects which he may call his own.

Ends | Man | Property | Rights | Wisdom | Wishes | Child | Value |

Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL

Always in everything let there be reverence; with the deportment grave as when one is thinking (deeply), and with speech composed and definite. This will make the people tranquil. Pride should not be allowed to grow; the desires should not be indulged; the will should not be gratified to the full; pleasure should not be carried to excess.

Excess | Grave | People | Pleasure | Pride | Reverence | Speech | Thinking | Will |

Mary Catherwood, fully Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.

Speech | Old |

Françoise Giroud

Equal rights for the sexes will be achieved when mediocre women occupy high positions.

Rights | Will |