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

Anthony of Sourozh, fully Archbishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh NULL

People are much greater and stronger than we imagine, and when unexpected tragedy comes we see them often grow to a stature that is far beyond anything we imagined. We must remember that people are capable of greatness, of courage, but not in isolation. They need the conditions of solidly linked human unit in which everyone is prepared to bear the burden of others.

Courage | Greatness | Isolation | Need | People | Tragedy | Wisdom |

Phillips Brooks

There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.

Despise | God | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Wisdom |

William Cullen Bryant

The press, important as is its office, is but the servant of the human intellect, and its ministry is for good or for evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill which grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill he hopper with poisoned grain, and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Character | Death | Evil | Good | Important | Office | Will | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.

Dignity | Liberty | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

Genius | Knowledge | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.

Experience | Meditation | Mind | Nothing | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"It is destiny" - Phrase of the weak human heart! "It is destiny" - dark apology for every error! The strong and virtuous admit no destiny.

Apology | Destiny | Error | Heart | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

In the world there are only two ways of raising one’s self, either by one’s own industry or by the weakness of others.

Industry | Self | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Chester Bliss Bowles

The chief characteristics of the (liberal) attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith.

Change | Faith | Reason | Sympathy | Wisdom |

William E. Borah

It seems perfectly clear to me that we can never make any real progress toward permanent peace so long as well recognize the institution of war as legitimate and clothe it with glory.

Glory | Peace | Progress | War | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

Benevolence | Fraud | Good | Knowledge | Little | Mankind | Wisdom | World | Friendship | Forgive | Learn |

Louis Bromfield

As soils are depleted, human health, vitality and intelligence to go with them.

Health | Intelligence | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

There is not so agonizing a feeling in the whole catalogue of human suffering, as the first conviction that the heart of the being whom we most tenderly love is estranged from us.

Heart | Love | Suffering | Wisdom |

Elihu Burritt

No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness.

Wisdom | World |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Earth | Heaven | Life | Life | Object | Play | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth.

Disease | Ends | Force | Growth | Life | Life | Man | Progress | Society | System | Weakness | Wisdom | Society |