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

Jeremy Taylor

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the tongue.

Knowledge | Light | Reason | Wisdom |

Lincoln Steffens, fully Joseph Lincoln Steffens

A child awakened out of a deep sleep, expressed all the crying babies and all the weeping idealists in the world. "Oh, dear," he said, "I have lost my place in my dream."

Wisdom | World | Child |

Symeon the New Theologian, fully Saint Symeon the New Theologian NULL

The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute knowing.

Absolute | Ignorance | Knowing | Knowledge | Light | Man | Understanding | Wisdom |

William Makepeace Thackeray

Life is the soul's nursery - its training place for the destinies of eternity.

Eternity | Life | Life | Soul | Training | Wisdom |

Robert James Turnbull

Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.

Age | Civilization | Darkness | Day | Disease | Doubt | Faith | Intelligence | Light | Price | Wisdom |

Henry Ware

The soul, advancing ever to the source of light and all perfection, lives, adores, and reigns in cloudless knowledge, purity and bliss.

Knowledge | Light | Perfection | Purity | Soul | Wisdom |

Simone Weil

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

Eternity | Light | Need | Poetry | Religion | Wisdom |

Robert Penn Warren

The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life.

Capacity | Life | Life | Light | Little | Man | Myth | Wisdom | Poem |

Herman Lincoln Wayland

To value riches is not to be covetous. They are the gift of God, and, like every gift of his, good in themselves, and capable of good use. But to overvalue riches, to give them a place in the heart, which God did not design them to fill, this is covetousness.

Design | God | Good | Heart | Riches | Wisdom | Riches | God | Value |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A true teacher should penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat of his own intelligence.

Intelligence | Light | Wisdom | Teacher |

Lyall Watson

We are, without permission but with our tacit approval, the subjects of a giant electrical experiment. Nor is there any end in sight. The density of radio waves around us now is 100 million times the natural level reaching us from the Sun, and by 1990 it will have doubled again. When superconducting cables are introduced, the field strength around power line will be increased by another twenty times. And electric cars and vehicles moved by magnetic levitation will add entirely new sources of electropollution to the stew with which we are already assailed. Meanwhile, the first results of the experiment are starting to come in and there is, it seems, no place to hide.

Experiment | Power | Strength | Will | Wisdom |

Lyall Watson

The biological origins of awareness... Contact, communication and recognition all take place at a very simple level - occurring even amongst social bacteria that seem to be able to recognise self from non-self.

Awareness | Self | Wisdom |

John Tyndall

Knowledge once gained casts a light beyond its own immediate boundaries.

Knowledge | Light | Wisdom |

William Wordsworth

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.

Light | Nature | Wisdom |