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

Victor Hugo

Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment.

Labor | Thought | Will | Thought |

Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

One should performed karma for the benefit of humanity with an unbiased approach because bias gives birth to evil, which creates thousands of obstacles in our path.

Birth | Deeds | Mankind | Deeds |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Says Nanak, the Truth has been revealed to me. The Guru has given me the treasure; I have taken it and enshrined it within my heart.

Lord | Value |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Hardly anyone loves the Lord's Name; how rare is that place which is in bloom.

Day | Will | Value |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come.

Asceticism | Idealism | Impulse | Mankind | Self-deception | Asceticism |

Václav Havel

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.

Authority | Awareness | Capacity | Earth | Honor | Hope | Nothing | Order | People | Respect | Right | Rights | Will | World | Respect | Awareness | Value |

Václav Havel

Poles are able to reflect their history, they respect it. Who knows if anybody will remember when we commemorate our 25 years [since the 1989 Velvet Revolution].

Authority | History | Meaning | Space | Time | World | Value |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

This race of men came there from India, flying from the sword of the Magi, a race of plunderers and tyrants who laid waste their country, and they determined to lead a philosophic life in fellowship with one another.

Cleanliness | Labor |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

Fame | Value |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.

Labor |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

We are not greatly pleased that our friends should respect our good qualities if they venture to perceive our faults.

Glory | Value |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.

Law | Mankind |

Vannevar Bush

We cannot meet it the threat of dictatorship if we turn this country into a wishy-washy imitation of totalitarianism, where every man’s hand is out for pabulum and virile creativeness has given place to the patronizing favor of swollen bureaucracy.

Economics | Labor | Time |

Tryon Edwards

The most we can get out of life is its discipline for ourselves, and its usefulness for others.

Good | Life | Life | Mankind | Perfection |

Tryon Edwards

The best rules of rhetoric are, to speak intelligently; speak from the heart; have something to say; say it; and stop when you've done.

Decision | Important | Promptness | Value |

Turkish Proverbs

The village one can see requires no guide.

Will | Youth | Youth | Old | Value |

Turkish Proverbs

Who has no intention to pray has no ears for the call to prayer.

Need | Will | Value |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.

Mankind |