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

Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

On the day of my conversion Charity entered into my heart and with it a yearning to forget self always; thenceforward I was happy.

Belief | Challenge | Conduct | Enemy | Eternity | Heaven | Knowing | Will |

Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

One of the most admirable effects of holy communion is to preserve the soul from sin, and to help those who fall through weakness to rise again. It is much more profitable, then, to approach this divine Sacrament with love, respect, and confidence, than to remain away through an excess of fear and scrupulosity.

Fear | Knowledge | Labor | Teach | Work |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

Like the sun's rays passing through a crack and lighting up the house, show up even the finest dust, the fear of the Lord on entering the heart of a man show up all his sins.

Cunning | Good | Joy | Love | Will | Afraid |

Stephan Jay Gould

Yet, just as individual selection emerged relatively unscarred after its battle with group selection from above, other evolutionists launched an attack from below. Genes, they argue, not individuals are the units of selection. They begin by recasting Butler's famous aphorism that a hen is merely the egg's way of making another egg. An animal, they argue, is only DNA's way of making more DNA. Richard Dawkins has put the case most forcefully in his recent book The Selfish Gene. ‘A body,’ he writes, ‘is the gene's way of preserving the gene unaltered.’ For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time. Bodies are temporary receptacles, survival machines manipulated by genes and tossed away on the geological scrap heap once genes have replicated and slaked their insatiable thirst for more copies of themselves in bodies of the next generation. He writes:

Abstract | Battle | Little | Love | Nature | Order | Television | Will |

Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL

When I see a man in a state of anxiety, I say, “What can this man want? If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he still be anxious?” [Epictetus]

Administration | Body | Father | Force | God | Man | Men | Power | Revolution | Will | God |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

A just war is in the long run far better for a nation's soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acquiescence in wrong or injustice.

Ability | Capacity | Character | Important | Individual | Love | Need | Power | Qualities | Race | Reason | Intellect |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

Battle | Critic | Deeds | Looks | Man | Deeds |

Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I'm somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill.

Battle | Family |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.

Despise | Infamy | Man | Public | Will | Worth |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster.

Chance | Cowardice | Despise | Ends | Evil | Good | Growth | Indulgence | Infamy | Justice | Luxury | Man | Mind | Peace | Public | Regard | Spirit | Will | Worth | Loss |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Business | Control | Government | Harm | Influence | Integrity | Means | Men | Mind | Promise | Public | Right | Slavery | Work | Worth | Government | Business |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it! And woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise!

Battle | Brotherhood | Future | Good | Men | Speech | Spirit |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitute for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

Good | Man | Reason | Rights | Privilege |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare. Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him.

Good | Men | Reason |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does not good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence which comes dangerously close to sacrilege. A beautiful and solemn sentence such as the one in question should be treated and uttered only with that fine reverence which necessarily implies a certain exaltation of spirit. Any use which tends to cheapen it, and, above all, any use which tends to secure its being treated in a spirit of levity, is free from every standpoint profoundly to be regretted. It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in buildings such as those at West Point and Annapolis - in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to be eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.

Thich Nhất Hanh

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

Compassion | Global | Intention | Order |

Thomas Carlyle

All that a university or final highest school. can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Man | Time | Will | Work |

Thomas Carlyle

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.

Stupidity | Truth |