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

Barry Cornwall, pseudonymn for Bryan Waller Procter

Death is the tyrant of the imagination. His reign is in solitude and darkness, in tombs and prisons, over weak hearts and seething brains. He lives, without shape or sound, a phantasm, inaccessible to sight or touch - a ghastly and terrible apprehension.

Character | Darkness | Death | Imagination | Solitude | Sound | Wisdom |

Thomas Merton

The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart... you will truly recover the light and capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanation because it is too close to be explained.

Capacity | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Silence | Solitude | Will | Words | Understand |

William L. Sullivan

A moral decision is the loneliest thing that exists. Knowledge is shed abroad everywhere. Anybody may dip his cup into that great sea and take out what he can. It is a public appropriation from a public store. But what the man himself must do as a moral being, what ordering he shall make of his life, what allegiance he shall choose, what cause he shall cleave to - this is decided in that solitude where his soul in authentic presence lives with no other companion than the Final Authority which he recognizes as supreme.

Authority | Cause | Character | Decision | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Public | Solitude | Soul |

William L. Sullivan

Solitary we must be in life's great hours of moral decisions; solitary in pain and sorrow; solitary in old age and in our going forth at death. Fortunate the man who has learned what to do in solitude and brought himself to see what companionship he may discover in it, what fortitude, what content.

Age | Character | Death | Fortitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Pain | Solitude | Sorrow | Companionship | Old |

Jean de La Bruyère

The young can bear solitude better than the old, for their passions occupy their thoughts.

Better | Solitude | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

Life | Life | Mind | Quiet | Solitude | Wisdom |

Gian Vincenzo Gravina

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

Man | Solitude | Wisdom |

Moses Harvey

In solitude all great thoughts are born.

Solitude | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

I am persuaded there is no such thing after all as a perfect enjoyment of solitude; for the more delicious the solitude the more one wants a companion.

Enjoyment | Solitude | Wants | Wisdom |

Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.

Awareness | Conscience | Destiny | Difficulty | Isolation | Order | Rites | Silence | Solitude | Wisdom | Awareness |

Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL

A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.

Discussion | Growth | Men | Mind | Solitude | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.

Age | Children | Death | Destroy | Education | Life | Life | Object | Occupation | Solitude | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

Living a good deal alone will, I believe, correct me of my faults; for a man can do without his own approbation in much society, but he must make great exertions to gain it when he lives alone. Without it I am convinced solitude is not to be endured.

Good | Man | Society | Solitude | Will | Wisdom |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon herself; in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports - the feigned compassion of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth - they all deceive and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.

Books | Compassion | Flattery | Mind | Reflection | Retirement | Solitude | Strength | Wisdom | World | Friendship |