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

Paul Reichmann

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.

Ability | Attention | Genius | Mind | Wisdom |

Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard

Words are the small change of thought.

Change | Thought | Wisdom | Words |

Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon

What you keep by you, you may change and mend; but words, once spoken, can never be recalled.

Change | Wisdom | Words |

Charles B. Rogers

To give great attention to details is one mark of the genius - to putter with trifles is not.

Attention | Genius | Trifles | Wisdom |

Sam Shoemaker, fully Samuel "Sam" Moor Shoemaker, III

Prayer may not change things for you, but it sure changes you for things.

Change | Prayer | Wisdom |

Richard and Greta Smolowe

We believe in a life continuum, and eternal life. Each incarnation or lifetime on earth is 'just a day in the classroom'... We believe the plane of greatest learning is the physical plane. It is up to all of us to make the most of each carnation. We believe that all there is in the universe is energy... and all energy forms, from subatomic particles to stars, are in a constant state of change and transformation... that interpreting energy frequencies on sensory bands creates the reality in which each life-form lives.

Change | Day | Earth | Energy | Eternal | Learning | Life | Life | Reality | Universe | Wisdom |

Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe

If the body is only the vehicle by which the soul can access the experience of physical living, then there is no real physical me. The soul (or life force) is the only real me. If you and I (the souls) want to achieve the most from this earthly lifetime, the more varied the experiences we should seek. That said, it’s too easy for you and me to fall into a comfort zone and try to avoid change. To keep this from happening, the experiences change rapidly as a result of the body moving from infancy though old age. The physical changes help to enhance our learning curve, our ability to serve, and our chance to evolve.

Ability | Age | Body | Chance | Change | Comfort | Experience | Force | Infancy | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | Soul | Wisdom | Old |

Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe

A species does not live within its environment; it interacts with it. Over a period of time a species can interact so violently that the changes it catalyzes can cause it to change dramatically--even to die out. Scientists estimate that 90% of the life forms that have inhabited our planet are now extinct. From the earliest single-cell life form to the human animal, all have interacted with the environment. All have created problems for themselves. All have been agents of evolutionary change. All have experienced evolution through cataclysm.

Cause | Change | Evolution | Life | Life | Problems | Time | Wisdom |

Lyall Watson

In short, human society is a product of evolution. It is created by natural selection and environmental pressures which bring individuals together in a special and powerful way, but it requires no physical change or mutation. It is a composition of ideas and beliefs - a new and essentially psychic phenomenon. A kind of supermind.

Change | Evolution | Ideas | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

In times when the passions are beginning to take charge of the conduct of human affairs, one should pay less attention to what men of experience and common sense are thinking than to what is preoccupying the imagination of dreamers.

Attention | Beginning | Common Sense | Conduct | Experience | Imagination | Men | Sense | Thinking | Wisdom |

Simone Weil

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

Attention | Prayer | Wisdom |

Richard Whately

If our religion is not true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to propagate it

Change | Religion | Wisdom |

Richard Whately

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention as attention is of memory; therefore the first business of a teacher - first not only in point of time, but of importance - should be to excite not merely a general curiosity on the subject of the study, but a particular curiosity on particular points in that subject. To teach one who has no curiosity to learn is to sow a field without ploughing it.

Attention | Business | Curiosity | Memory | Study | Teach | Time | Wisdom | Business | Learn | Parent | Teacher |