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

Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Children | Genius | Humanity | Hunger | Life | Life | Money | Sense | War | World |

Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.

Error | Fear | Means | Servitude | Sorrow | Time |

Eric Hoffer

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance can almost serve as a substitute for hope; and it not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.

Hope | Hunger | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Gail Sheehy

Temperence in all things, including our hopes as well as our fears, is a worthy goal, but it is hardly human to be always temperate. It is far wiser to know how to balance a great sorrow with a great happiness, or a recurrence of dread with a renewal of faith.

Balance | Dread | Faith | Sorrow |

George MacDonald

Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter.

Joy | Sorrow |

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.

Good | Mind | Sorrow |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Enough | History | Life | Life | Man | Sorrow | Suffering |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.

Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Enough | History | Life | Life | Man | Sorrow | Suffering |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man's life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Enough | History | Life | Life | Man | Sorrow | Suffering |

Henry Ward Beecher

To spend several days in a friend's house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.

Body | Friend | Hunger | Mind |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Enough | History | Life | Life | Man | Sorrow | Suffering |

Henry Ward Beecher

God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.

Affliction | God | Heaven | Land | Love | Sorrow | Space | Tears | God |

Henry Ward Beecher

If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires.

Eternal | God | Joy | Life | Life | Nothing | Prosperity | Sorrow | God |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us farther than today... Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Hear within, and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time... Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.

Art | Enjoyment | Fate | Future | God | Grave | Heart | Labor | Life | Life | Men | Past | Present | Sorrow | Soul | Time | Trust | God | Learn |

James Martineau

A certain glorious sorrow must ever mingle with out life; all our actual is transcended by our possible; our visionary faculty is an overmatch for our experience; like the caged bird, we break ourselves against the bars of the finite, with a wing that quivers for the infinite.

Experience | Life | Life | Sorrow |

Joseph Addison

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.

Envy | Mankind | Sorrow |

John Ruskin

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right thing, but enjoy the right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge; not merely pure, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

Education | Hunger | Industry | Justice | Knowledge | Love | Object | People | Purity | Right |

Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination.

Beauty | Ends | Heart | Imagination | Joy | Receive | Self | Sorrow | Soul |

Kahlil Gibran

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the good ness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life.

Beauty | Despair | Earth | Eternal | God | Good | Happy | Heaven | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Sorrow | Spirit | Will | Worship | Beauty | Learn |