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

Margaret Young, born Margaret Youngblood

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Character | Money | Need | Order | People | Will |

George Matthew Adams

We can accomplish almost anything within our ability if we but think we can! Every great achievement in this world was first carefully thought out... Think - but to a purpose. Think constructively. Think as you read. Think as you listen. Think as you travel and eyes reveal new situations. Think as you work daily at your place in life. There can be no advancement or success without serious thought.

Ability | Achievement | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Think | Thought |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

Wine-drinking is the mother of all mischief, the root of crimes, the spring of vices, the whirlwind of the brain, the overthrow of the sense, the tempest of the tongue, the ruin of the body, the shame of life, the stain of honesty, and the plague and corruption of the soul.

Body | Corruption | Honesty | Life | Life | Mother | Sense | Shame | Soul | Wisdom |

Charles Kendall Adams

No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines greatness.

Excellence | Greatness | Success | Wisdom | Excellence |

Louise A. Vernon

Failure changes to success when one acquires self-knowledge.

Character | Failure | Knowledge | Self | Self-knowledge | Success |

Simone Weil

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

Character | Life | Life | Order | People | Suffering |

Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton

Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; but still more when they are super bad and add the tendency of the certainty of corruption of authority.

Authority | Corruption | Influence | Men | Wisdom |

John Stuart Blakie

Creation is the production of order. What a simple, but, at the same time comprehensive and pregnant principle is here! Plato could tell his disciples no ultimate truth of more pervading significance. Order is the law of all intelligible existence.

Existence | Law | Order | Time | Truth | Wisdom |

George Dana Boardman "The Younger"

The ignorant man marvels at the exceptional; the wise man marvels at the common; the greatest wonder of all is the regularity of nature.

Man | Nature | Wisdom | Wise | Wonder |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Governments which suppress freedom of speech... act like children who shut their eyes in order not to be seen.

Children | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Order | Speech | Wisdom |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

To resist with success the frigidity of old age, one must combine the body, the mind, and the heart; to keep these in parallel vigor, one must exercise, study, and love.

Age | Body | Heart | Love | Mind | Old age | Study | Success | Wisdom | Old |

Vera Mary Brittain

I can think of few important movements for reform in which success was won by any; method other than that of an energetic minority presenting the indifferent majority with a fait accompli, which was then accepted.

Important | Majority | Method | Reform | Success | Wisdom | Think |

William J. Broad and Nicholas J. Wade

Finding facts in actuality is less rewarded than developing a theory of law that explains the facts, and herein lies an enticement. In making sense out of the unruly substance of nature, and in trying to get there first, a scientist is sometimes tempted to play fast and loose with the facts in order to make a theory look more compelling than it really is.

Law | Nature | Order | Play | Sense | Wisdom |

Joyce Brothers

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

Failure | Inevitable | Success | Wisdom | Failure | Learn |