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

James Russell Lowell

All thoughts that mould the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.

Age | Character | Soul |

Marya Mannes

Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others - values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.

Age | Character | Little |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely, see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.

Age | Character | Man | Old age | Soul | Old |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudice; whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?

Age | Character | Life | Life | Old age | Past | Prejudice | Present | Old |

Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence

If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.

Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Not by age but by character is wisdom attained.

Age | Character | Wisdom |

Austin O'Malley

After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women; before that age he has feelings.

Age | Character | Feelings | Man |

William L. Sullivan

Solitary we must be in life's great hours of moral decisions; solitary in pain and sorrow; solitary in old age and in our going forth at death. Fortunate the man who has learned what to do in solitude and brought himself to see what companionship he may discover in it, what fortitude, what content.

Age | Character | Death | Fortitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Pain | Solitude | Sorrow | Companionship | Old |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one every thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

Age | Good | Myth | People | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Old | Thought |

Daniel Webster

We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men - the lights of the world, and of the present age - have given their sanction.

Age | Character | Influence | Men | Opinion | Power | Present | Principles | Public | World |

Apocrypha NULL

Let not anxiety enter your heart, for it has killed many strong men... Anxiety brings on old age prematurely.

Age | Anxiety | Anxiety | Heart | Men | Old age | Wisdom | Old |

Hans Christian Anderson

Time is so fleeting that if we do not remember God in our youth, age may find us incapable of thinking about him.

Age | God | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | Youth | God |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

We can't reach old age by another man's road.

Age | Character | Man | Old age | Old |

J. Beaumont

Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression.

Age | Childhood | Courage | Extreme | Ignorance | Man | Men | Nothing | Old age | Oppression | Will | Wisdom | Old |

Eric Bentley

Ours is the age of substitutes; instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.

Age | Ideas | Language | Principles | Wisdom |

Joe Bayly, fully Joseph Tate Bayly

In an age of the inconsequential and frivolous, reading fills our minds with the consequential. Reading involves stewardship of a mind, that was created in the divine image, to think great thoughts as well as to notice the small sparrow. Reading stretches the mind.

Age | Mind | Reading | Stewardship | Wisdom | Think |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Not years but experiences age us; hence man would be the unhappiest of creatures were he a diligent pupil of experience. That each new generation and each new era starts out from the cradle is what keeps mankind eternally young.

Age | Era | Experience | Man | Mankind | Wisdom |