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

Jeremy Taylor

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the tongue.

Knowledge | Light | Reason | Wisdom |

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

It would seem that by our sorrows only we are called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.

Happy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Samuel Smiles

Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.

Culture | Inheritance | Knowledge | Man | Self | Thinking | Wisdom | Work |

Symeon the New Theologian, fully Saint Symeon the New Theologian NULL

The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute knowing.

Absolute | Ignorance | Knowing | Knowledge | Light | Man | Understanding | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite!

Art | Cause | Chance | Earth | Eternity | Folly | Heaven | Nothing | Philosophy | Reason | Skill | Time | Understanding | Wisdom | Art | Think |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

Like sex, knowledge is good if used in the service of life and love.

Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Service | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands, and there is no knowledge that is not power.

Knowledge | Power | Wisdom |

Ralph C. Smedley

Understanding comes through communication, and through understanding we find the way to peace.

Peace | Understanding | Wisdom |

Richard Whately

True wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter it is deceptive.

Knowledge | Past | Perception | Wisdom |

Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall

Today the conservation movement finds itself turning back to ancient Indian land ideas, to the Indian understanding that we are not outside of nature, but of it... In recent decades we have slowly come back to some of the truths that the Indian knew from the beginning; that unborn generations have a claim on the land equal to our own; that men need to keep an ear to the earth, and to replenish their spirits in frequent contacts with animals and wild land.

Beginning | Conservation | Earth | Ideas | Land | Men | Nature | Need | Understanding | Wisdom | Truths |

Barbara Mary Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, Lady Robert Jackson

To act without rapacity, to use knowledge with wisdom, to respect interdependence, to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral operatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.

Greed | Knowledge | Means | Respect | Survival | Wisdom | Respect |

Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf

Youngsters and adults cannot learn if information is pressed into their brains. You can teach only by creating interest, by creating an urge to know. Knowledge has to be sucked into the brain, not pushed into it. First, one must create a state of mind that craves knowledge, interest and wonder.

Knowledge | Mind | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder | Learn |

Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry

The majority of those who flatter themselves on their knowledge of the human heart do not separate their boasted insight from their unfavorable feeling about humanity... Nothing indeed imparts a psychological air so much as an habitual attitude of depreciation.

Heart | Humanity | Insight | Knowledge | Majority | Nothing | Wisdom |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Just as divine truth is what God orders and produces as He comes to know it, so human truth is what man arranges and makes as he knows it. In this way knowledge is cognition of the genus or mode by which a thing is made, and by means of which, as the mind comes to know the mode, because it arranges the elements, it makes the thing. Divine truth is solid because God grasps all things; human truth is two-dimensional because man grasps the externals of things.

God | Knowledge | Man | Means | Mind | Truth | Wisdom | God |

Lyall Watson

If reality flows like a stream, then knowledge of such reality also becomes fluid, a process rather than a set of fixed truths. And because all knowledge is produced, displayed, communicated and applied in thought; then thought too must be seen as part of the same eternal tide... Thought is, in essence, a response of memory. It consists of a repetition of some image or sensation, or it involves a combination or reorganisation of such repetition in a new and useful way. So, in the end, intelligence turns out to be part of the flow. It is not grounded in cells or molecules, but drawn from the same moving stream as reality. In other words, mind and matter are ultimately inseparable.

Eternal | Intelligence | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Reality | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Thought |

Simone Weil

If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God exists, we should find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves do not exist for it is the same thought.

God | Joy | Knowledge | Thought | Wisdom | God | Thought |