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

John Dewey

The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.

Action | Experience | Faith | Future | Reality | Religion | Sense | Will | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell. To live in the future is a contradiction in terms. The future is dead, in the perfectly definite sense it is not alive.

Contradiction | Future | Necessity | Nothing | Past | Present | Sense | Wisdom |

Thomas Dekker

To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that goes with work well done - this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.

Day | Desire | Heart | Joy | Laughter | Little | Love | Men | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Reverence | Smile | Waste | Wisdom | Work |

John Dewey

I believe that... education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living... all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race... Every thinker puts one portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

Consciousness | Education | Future | Individual | Peril | Race | Wisdom | World |

Susan Coleridge

Every day is a fresh beginning, Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, and spite of old sorrow, and older sinning, and troubles forecasted, and possible pain, take heart with the day, and begin again.

Beginning | Day | Heart | Pain | Sorrow | Soul | Troubles | Wisdom | Old |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |

Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla

One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be.

Better | Future | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Karl Deutsch, fully Karl Wolfgang Deutsch

The single greatest power in the world today is the power to change... The most recklessly irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today.

Change | Conservatism | Future | Past | Policy | Power | Wisdom | World |

Orville Dewey

The dead carry our thoughts to another and a nobler existence. They teach us, and especially buy all the strange and seemingly untoward circumstances of their departure from this life, that they and we shall live in a future state forever.

Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Teach | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

He who can suppress a moment's anger may prevent a day of sorrow.

Anger | Day | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Charles W. Eliot

The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.

Future | Happy | Wisdom | Happiness |

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receives.

Evidence | Future | Past | Regret | Right | Wisdom | World | Wrong |

Thomas Dreier

If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day.

Better | Day | Future | Life | Life | Little | Present | Time | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

How extraordinary is the situation of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without going deeper than our daily life, it is plain we exist for our fellow men, in the first place for those upon whose smiles and welfare our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally but to whose destinies we are bound by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

Day | Life | Life | Men | Order | Sympathy | Wisdom | Happiness |

Gustave Flaubert

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

Challenge | Dejection | Despair | Future | Life | Life | Promise | Success | Wisdom |