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

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

When you walk through the storm, hold your head high and don't be afraid of the dark! At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet song of the lark. Walk on through the wind walk on through the rain though your dreams be tossed & blown walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone!

Blame | Power |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

There is no tropical island paradise I know of which remotely matches up to the fantasy ideal that such a phrase is meant to conjure up, or even to what we find described in holiday brochures. It's natural to put this down to the discrepancy we are all used to finding between what advertisers promise and what the real world delivers. It doesn't surprise us much any more. So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left.

Computer | Future | Power | Right |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

Normality | Power | Will |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The height of ability in the least able consists in knowing how to submit to the good leadership of others.

Ability | Age | Genius | Knowledge | Value |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

Love | Power |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The greatest part of intimate confidences proceed from a desire either to be pitied or admired.

Power |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

It is a common fault never to be satisfied with our fortune, nor dissatisfied with our understanding.

Art | Nature | Power | Art |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Ability |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

There is no accident so disastrous that a clever man cannot derive some profit from it; nor any so fortunate that a fool cannot turn it to his disadvantage.

Ability | Advice | Good |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Whatever distrust we may have of the sincerity of those who converse with us, we always believe they will tell us more truth than they do to others.

Disgrace | Power |

William Shakespeare

O here will I set of my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world wearied flesh eyes look your last arms take your last embrace and lips all you the doors of breath seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Darkness | Heaven | Love | Man | Power | Sympathy |

Dugald Stewart

The consequence has been (in too many physical systems), to level the study of nature, in point of moral interest, with the investigations of the algebraist.

Birth | Business | Imagination | Means | Power | Present | Sense | Business |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.

Disgrace | Power |

Dugald Stewart

It ought not to be the leading object of any one to become an eminent metaphysician, mathematician, or poet, but to render himself happy as an individual, and an agreeable, a respectable, and a useful member of society.

Mind | Order | Power | Understand |