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

Francis Quarles

Happy is he the place of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honour.

Beauty | Character | Happy | Riches | Virtue | Virtue |

Nicholas Rescher

Reason itself... demands that we recognize the limited place of the virtues of cognition, inquiry, and the cerebral side of life. An adequate account of rationality must rightly stress its importance and primacy while recognizing that the intellectual virtues are only limited components of the good life.

Character | Good | Inquiry | Life | Life | Rationality | Reason |

William Makepeace Thackeray

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.

Chance | Character | Life | Life | Nothing |

Yitzchok Waldshein

To have peace of mind it is important that the place where you live and work is organized and clean.

Character | Important | Mind | Peace | Work |

Elizabeth Anscombe, fully Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret "G. E. M." Anscombe

You cannot take any performance (even an interior performance) as itself an act of intention; for if you describe a performance, the fact that it has taken place is not a proof of intention; words for example may occur in somebody’s mind without his meaning them. so intention is never a performance in the mind, though in some matters a performance in the mind which is seriously meant may make a difference to the correct account of the man’s action - e.g., in embracing someone. But the matters in question are necessarily ones in which outward acts are ‘significant’ in some way.

Action | Example | Intention | Man | Meaning | Mind | Question | Wisdom | Words |

Anaxagoras NULL

The descent to Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.

Wisdom |

George Matthew Adams

We can accomplish almost anything within our ability if we but think we can! Every great achievement in this world was first carefully thought out... Think - but to a purpose. Think constructively. Think as you read. Think as you listen. Think as you travel and eyes reveal new situations. Think as you work daily at your place in life. There can be no advancement or success without serious thought.

Ability | Achievement | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Think | Thought |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And canst thou take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change? And canst thou be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Dost thou not see then that for thyself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

Change | Man | Nature | Wisdom | Afraid |

George H. Bender

There is no one who cannot find a place for himself in our kind of world. Each of us has some unique capacity waiting for realization. Every person is valuable in his own existence - for himself alone.

Capacity | Existence | Unique | Waiting | Wisdom | World |

George W. Bain

You often hear the remark that “there is no harm in a glass of wine per se.” Per se means by itself. Certainly there is no harm in a glass of wine by itself. Place a glass of wine one a shelf and let it remain there, and it is per se, and will harm no one. But if you turn it inside a man, then it is no longer per se.

Harm | Man | Means | Will | Wisdom |

Clara Lucas Balfour

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of heaven?

Earth | Heaven | Smile | Wisdom | World |

James Ford Bell

Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress... Fear is met and destroyed with courage.

Body | Courage | Enemy | Fear | Progress | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work |

John Barrymore

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

Dreams | Man | Wisdom | Old |

Babylonian Talmud

It is not the place that honors the man, but the man that adds luster to the place.

Man | Wisdom |