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

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

Heroism is active genius; genius, contemplative heroism. Heroism is the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in action.

Action | Character | Devotion | Genius | Self |

John Hay, fully John Milton Hay

They [trees] hang on from a past no theory can recover. They will survive us. The air makes their music. Otherwise, they live in savage silence, though mites and nematodes and spiders teem at their roots, and though the energy with which they feed on the sun and are able to draw water sometimes hundred of feet up their trunks and into their twigs and branches calls for a deafening volume of sound.

Character | Energy | Music | Past | Silence | Sound | Will |

Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"

The memory of past favors, is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful, but it soon fades away. The memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever.

Character | Heart | Memory | Past |

Heinrich Heine

The men of the past had convictions, while we moderns have only opinions.

Character | Convictions | Men | Past |

Victor Hugo

Inspiration and genius - one and the same.

Character | Genius | Inspiration | Wisdom |

David Hume

The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press; by which all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation, may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be animated to its defense.

Ambition | Character | Defense | Dread | Freedom | Genius | Learning | Liberty | Nothing | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Wit | Ambition |

David Hume

Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure, education, genius and example to make it govern any person.

Character | Curiosity | Education | Example | Genius | Influence | Knowledge | Leisure | Love | Youth | Govern |

Walter Savage Landor

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

Character | Future | Human nature | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Nature | Present |

Jean Jules Jusserand, fully Jean Adrien Antoine Jules Jusserand

The future is not in the hands of fate but in ours.

Character | Fate | Future | Fate |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment of each one of us - recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state - our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions - were we truly men of courage... were we truly men of judgment... were we truly men of integrity... were we truly men of dedication?

Character | Courage | Dedication | Failure | Future | History | Integrity | Judgment | Men | Office | Service | Success | Will |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

He alone is a man who can resist the genius of the age, the tone of fashion, with vigorous simplicity and modest courage.

Age | Character | Courage | Genius | Man | Simplicity |

Yosef Zev Leipowitz

Every person alive today derives much benefit from comforts and pleasures that in the past were not available. All of the latest inventions and findings of technology serve us to a remarkable degree. For all this we should be full of appreciation and gratitude.

Appreciation | Character | Gratitude | Past | Technology | Appreciation |