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

Washington Irving

It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroying Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of The Sword of God. The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed.

Children | Good | Policy | Old | Parent | Value |

Washington Irving

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.

Parent | Value |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

An infinity of forests lies dormant within the dreams of one Acorn.

Behavior | Criticism | Focus | Value |

Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

The only real service we can render to that which we perceive and interpret in phenomenal existence as 'others' is by awakening to universal consciousness ourselves.

Life | Life | Value |

Wayne Muller

Within sorrow is grace. When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.

Day | Labor | Listening | Rest | War | Work |

Wendell Berry

Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

Agony | Earth | Good | Grace | Labor | Life | Life | Luxury | World | Learn | Think |

Wendell Berry

The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.

Better | Cause | Doctrine | Innovation | Progress | Value |

Wendell Berry

Charity even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator's love for it.

Land | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Patriotism | Ugly | Think | Value |

Wendell Berry

In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree.

Citizenship | Commerce | Enemy | Family | Freedom | Health | Individual | Life | Life | Majority | Mind | People | Power | Property | Society | Truth | Wealth | Will | Society | Commerce | Learn | Value |

Wendell Berry

Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.

Labor |

Wendell Berry

The more local and settled a culture, the better it stays put, the less the damage. It is the foreigner whose road of excess leads to a desert … a man with a machine and inadequate culture … is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold.

Arrogance | Choice | Ignorance | Nothing | Respect | Time | Will | Respect | Old | Value |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.

Earth | Mankind | Need |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

Let us then consider rather the incessant Now of the traveler through time, his tired mind biased towards bigness since his body must exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope.

Honor | Value |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

Each person’s unconscious uses symbols quite universally when addressing the Trans-personal aspects of one’s Being. Everyone will project his or her own unconscious material into such material (including me) which makes for an even richer process for each dream interpreter and dreamer. We want to project into a dream to catch glimpses of what wants to become conscious in the interpreter and in the dreamer. The vast majority of dreams address the Soul and Its journey through life and not the Ego’s perception of the journey.

System | Value |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

Illness comes from living too small a process or too large a process.

Art | Awareness | Compensation | Experience | Individual | Present | System | Universe | Will | Wrong | Art | Awareness | Value |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

If we are to appreciate the inner dynamics we don't need to change them or judge them. There is wisdom in each of the dynamics observed. To determine what you think should happen is placing the ego in charge of the show. When the deep beingness seeks a change you will know it. Otherwise the wisdom is to put oneself in accord with the Mystery. This is hard for anyone with degrees of control issues.

Challenge | Ego | Extreme | Mystery | Need | Phenomena | Power | Sense | Success | Time | Loss | Value |

W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?

Evil | History | Man | Philosophy | Regard | Study | Value |

W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming

The most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.

Value |

W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

The topics and treatment of the mathematics syllabus should be determined by the following principles: a. The course must be enjoyable and generate steadily increasing enthusiasm in the pupils, b. It should develop independence and activity of mind, curiosity, observation, and confidence, c. It should make pupils familiar with the basic ideas and processes of mathematics.

Children | Confidence | Life | Life | Mathematics | Truth | Will | Value |

W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade

Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt.

Feelings | Force | Mankind | Science | War | Will |