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

John M. Burgess

Many people are liberal in principle, reluctant in practice.

Character | People | Practice |

William Blake

The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: 1. That man has two real existing principles; vis; a body and a soul. 2. That energy, called evil, is alone from body, and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. 3. That God will torment man in eternity for the following energies. But the following contraries to these are true: 1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is bound or outward circumference of energy. 3. Energy is eternal delight.

Age | Body | Character | Devil | Energy | Eternal | Eternity | Evil | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Principles | Reason | Sacred | Soul | Will | Following | God |

Jean de La Bruyère

The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as there are people useful to his fortune.

Character | Fortune | Man | People |

John Bunyan

One leak will sink a ship; and one sin will destroy a sinner.

Character | Destroy | Sin | Will |

Yosef Leib Bloch, fully R' Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch

Young people imagine there is great value in fame. Those with life experience know that in truth publicity is extremely short-lived. The nature of the world is that every piece of news makes an impression for only a very short time. After those few minutes the impression is erased and quickly forgotten. It is as if it never was.

Character | Experience | Fame | Impression | Life | Life | Nature | News | People | Time | Truth | World | Value |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, the soul of man is immortal... the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all... the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Good | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | Happiness |

Yehuda Leib Chasman

A thousand logical statements will be destroyed in the face of one light desire. When a person’s desires overcome his intellect, he becomes an idiot... It is a daily occurrence that people who follow their desires do foolish things that will destroy them both in this world and the next.

Character | Desire | Destroy | Light | People | Will | World |

William Ellery Channing

We cannot enjoy a friend here. If we are to meet it is beyond the grave. How much of our soul a friend takes with him! We half die in him.

Character | Friend | Grave | Soul |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Some people habitually wear sadness, like a garment, and think it a becoming grace. God loves a cheerful worshipper.

Character | God | Grace | People | Sadness | God | Think |

Horace Bushnell

Respectable sin is, in principle, the mother of all basest crime. Follow it to the bitter end, and there is ignominy as well as guilt eternal.

Character | Crime | Eternal | Guilt | Ignominy | Mother | Sin |

Ilka Chase

The only people who never fail are those who never try.

Character | People |

Richard Cecil

The very heart and root of sin is in an independent spirit. We erect the idol self; and not only wish others to worship, but worship ourselves.

Character | Heart | Self | Sin | Spirit | Worship |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Bigotry dwarfs the soul but shutting out the truth.

Bigotry | Character | Soul | Truth |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

Ability | Character | Courage | Distrust | Meekness | Revenge | Self | Soul | Forgive |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite. Pride is the master sin of the Devil; and the Devil is the father of lies.

Character | Devil | Father | Hypocrisy | Ostentation | Pride | Sin |

Canassatego Treaty of Lancaster NULL

You who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. You will not therefore take it amiss if our ideas of the white man’s kind of education happens not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience with it. Several of our young people were brought up in your colleges. They were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger. They didn’t know how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy. They spoke our language imperfectly. They were therefore unfit to be hunters, warriors, or counselors; they were good for nothing. We are, however, not less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting it. To show our gratefulness, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care with their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.

Care | Character | Education | Enemy | Experience | Good | Hunger | Ideas | Kill | Language | Man | Means | Men | Nations | Nothing | People | Will | Wise |