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

Apocrypha NULL

What is philosophy? To deliberate well in reference to any question that emerges, never to be carried away by impulses, but to ponder over the injuries that result from the passions, and to act rightly as the circumstances demand, practicing moderation.

Character | Circumstances | Moderation | Philosophy | Question |

J. Beaumont

If men wound you with injuries, meet them with patience; hasty words rankle the wound, soft language dresses it, forgiveness cures it, and oblivion takes away the scar. It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury; than by argument to overcome it.

Argument | Character | Forgiveness | Language | Men | Oblivion | Patience | Silence | Words | Forgiveness |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

The wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

Character | Circumstances | Duality | Failure | Life | Life | Man | Spirit | Success | Truth | Wise |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Kindness is a language the dumb can speak, and the deaf can hear and understand.

Character | Kindness | Language |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

To speak well supposes a habit of attention which shows itself in the thought; by language we learn to think and above all to develop thought.

Attention | Character | Habit | Language | Thought | Wisdom | Learn | Think |

Marcelene Cox

It could be written, for most of us: due to circumstances within our control.

Character | Circumstances | Control |

Canassatego Treaty of Lancaster NULL

You who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. You will not therefore take it amiss if our ideas of the white man’s kind of education happens not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience with it. Several of our young people were brought up in your colleges. They were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger. They didn’t know how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy. They spoke our language imperfectly. They were therefore unfit to be hunters, warriors, or counselors; they were good for nothing. We are, however, not less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting it. To show our gratefulness, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care with their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.

Care | Character | Education | Enemy | Experience | Good | Hunger | Ideas | Kill | Language | Man | Means | Men | Nations | Nothing | People | Will | Wise |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let us say from young people, this information about the sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing interest in such matters prematurely, before it spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by concealment of this kind the development of the sexual instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in the civilized social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should consider everything connected with sex as something despicable and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish to keep them apart as long as possible? I am really at a loss so say which of these can be the motive for the customary concealment from children of everything connected with sex. I only know that these arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that I find it difficult to pay them the compliment of serious refutation.

Character | Children | Concealment | Fear | Hope | Influence | Instinct | Knowledge | Life | Life | Order | Parents | People | Time | Understanding | Will | Loss |

Stephan Jay Gould

We cannot read the meaning of life passively in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers ourselves - from our own wisdom and ethical sense. There is no other way.

Character | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Sense | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

I endeavor to subdue circumstances to myself, and not myself to circumstances.

Character | Circumstances |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Misfortunes display the skill of a general, prosperous circumstances conceal his weakness.

Character | Circumstances | Display | Skill | Weakness |

William Ralph Inge

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.

Character | Education | Knowledge |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Whenever, for any reason, we wish to think of the world, not as it appears to common sense, but as a continuum, we find that our traditional syntax and vocabulary are quite inadequate. Mathematicians have therefore been compelled to invent radically new symbol-systems for this express purpose. But the divine Ground of all existence is not merely a continuum, it is also out of time, and different, not merely in degree, but in kind from the worlds to which traditional language and the languages of mathematics are adequate.

Character | Common Sense | Existence | Language | Mathematics | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Sense | Time | World | Think |

David Hume

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

Character | Circumstances | Happy | Temper |

Washington Irving

He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

Character | Ideas | Language | Little | Man | Sound | Thought | Will | Words | Thought |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

If you had been looking for happiness in people and events, you discovered that it is not there. If you look to outer circumstances for your satisfaction cues, you will stay on an emotion seesaw... True joy is actually part of your nature... Events merely give us an excuse to feel it.

Character | Circumstances | Events | Joy | Nature | People | Will | Happiness |

David Hume

Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now ‘tis evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, complete in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. ‘Tis impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.

Character | Disagreement | Discovery | Existence | Falsehood | Ideas | Object | Reason | Truth | Discovery |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |