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

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair.

Means |

Hugh Blair

Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man

Emotions | Ingenuity | Means | Words | Ingenuity |

Thucydides NULL

You are convinced by experience that very few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.

Ability | Audacity | Change | Courage | Extreme | Man | Meaning | Means | Moderation | Moderation | Afraid |

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.

Consciousness | God | Means | Religion | Submission | Will | God |

Thurgood Marshall

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

Books | Business | Means | Business |

Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam.

Means | People | Reform | Success | System |

Tibullus, fully Albius Tibullus NULL

I could live in the woods with thee in sight, where never should human foot intrude: or with thee find light in the darkest night, and a social crowd in solitude.

Death | Means |

Tom Hopkins

Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you.

Effort | Growth | Means | Work | Learn |

William Shakespeare

Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch, to try if thou be current gold indeed: young Edward lives.

Life | Life | Means | Praise |

William Shakespeare

But we are spirits of another sort. I with the morning's love have oft made sport, and like a forester the groves may tread even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, opening on Neptune with fair blessèd beams, turns unto yellow gold his salt green streams. A Midsummer Nights Dream, Act iii, Scene 2

Means |

William Shakespeare

But whether unripe years did want conceit, or he refused to take her figured proffer, the tender nibbler would not touch the bait, but smile and jest at every gentle offer. The Passionate Pilgrim

Means | War | Blessed |

William Shakespeare

Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, and the youth, mistook by me, pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Happy | Means | Repose |

William Shakespeare

Come, gentle night, — come, loving black brow'd night, give me my Romeo; and when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of Heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun. Romeo and Juliet, Act iii, Scene 2

Fault | Means | Mother | Receive | Shame | Temper | Will | Words | Fault | Guilty |

William Godwin

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous.

Appearance | Assertion | Darkness | Destroy | Lesson | Means | Neglect | Nothing | Public | Reason | Security |

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt.

Action | Means | System | Time | Leader |

Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what they eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants

Means |

William James

Education is the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior .

Anger | Cause | Character | Energy | Joy | Little | Means | Nothing | Pain | People | Pleasure | Self | Weakness |

William Godwin

Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.

Accident | Consideration | Contradiction | Control | Experiment | Father | Indulgence | Little | Man | Means | Mind | Nothing | Passion | Persuasion | Power | Trust | Will | Happiness |

William James

Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is "All striving is vain," will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.

Belief | Cause | Doubt | Faith | Means |

William James

From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these.

Habit | Means |