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

William Morris

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, think but one thought of me up in the stars.

Contempt | Imagination |

William Morris

Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die. Within a little time must ye go by. Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live take all the gifts that Death and Life may give!

Action |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.

Earth | Feelings | Imagination | People | Thinking | Thought | Parent | Thought |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

However great the advantages which nature bestows on us, it is not she alone, but fortune in conjunction with her, which makes heroes.

Action | Wisdom |

Dugald Stewart

Casuistry is the department of ethics, the great object of which is to lay down rules or canons for directing how to act wherever there is any room for doubt or hesitation.

Imagination |

Dugald Stewart

The consequence has been (in too many physical systems), to level the study of nature, in point of moral interest, with the investigations of the algebraist.

Birth | Business | Imagination | Means | Power | Present | Sense | Business |

William Shakespeare

Once more, adieu. The rest let sorrow say.

Action | Disguise | Dishonor | Doubt | Good | Man | Men | Mettle | Nature | Nothing | Peace | Spirit | Teach | War | Worth |

William Shakespeare

O, wither’d is the garland of the war! The soldier’s pole is fall'n; young boys and girls are level now with men; the odds is gone, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon.

Appetite | Good | Imagination | Thinking |

William Shakespeare

Or ere I could Give him that parting kiss which I had set Betwixt two charming words--comes in my father, And like the tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing.

Appetite | Imagination |

William Shakespeare

Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.

Action |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.

Action | Society | Society |

Edwin Percy Whipple

All history shows the power of blood over circumstances, as agriculture shows the power of the seeds over the soil.

Imagination |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

If wives suppress not contempt for husbands, then it follows that such wives rebuke and scold their husbands. If husbands stop not short of anger, then they are certain to beat their wives. The correct relationship between husband and wife is based upon harmony and intimacy, and conjugal love is grounded in proper union. Should actual blows be dealt, how could matrimonial relationship be preserved? Should sharp words be spoken, how could conjugal love exist? If love and proper relationship both be destroyed, then husband and wife are divided.

Action | Discussion | Disrespect | Habit | Heart | Husband | Knowing | Language | Lust | Space | Wife | Will | Following |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches; and many a blithe heart dances under coarse wool.

Action | Angels | Duty | Right | Truth |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

The primary dispositions are innate; the acquired ones, like virtue and the rest, depend on the instruments. The uterine germ and the rest belong to the effect.

Action |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

Consequences | Good | Hell | Man |

Edwin Percy Whipple

The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.

Action | Greatness |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

Like the visible means, the revealed mode is also tainted, destructive and excessive. Different from these and superior is that method consisting in discriminative knowledge of the manifest, the unmanifest and the knower.

Action | Nature | People |