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

Merryle Stanley Rukeyser

To build Utopias in defiance of scientific principles is only a fool's errand. If false hopes are momentarily good for morale, we must ultimately pay for such folly in episodes of disillusionment, cynicism and despair.

Cynicism | Defiance | Despair | Disillusionment | Folly | Good | Principles | 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 |

Anne Sullivan, fully Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Macy

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better.

Beginning | Better | Education | Will | Wisdom | Child | Think |

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 |

Talleyrand, fully Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1st Prince de Bénévent NULL

Too much sensibility creates unhappiness; too much insensibility leads to crime.

Crime | Sensibility | Unhappiness | Wisdom |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

If the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness.

Contentment | Man | Principles | Will | Wisdom |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them.

Childhood | Principles | Study | Wisdom |

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 |

Daniel Webster

Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.

Knowledge | Liberty | Love | Principles | 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 |

Edward Noyes Westcott

The only man who can change his mind is the man who's got one.

Change | Man | Mind | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles with the just fear of God and love of our fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.

Eternity | Fear | God | Love | Principles | Time | Will | Wisdom | Work | God |

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

Change | Day | Example | Nature | Time | Wisdom |