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

Léon Bloy

Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.

Character | Existence | Heart | Man | Order | Suffering |

Jean de La Bruyère

It is a very rare thing to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |

Georg Brandes, fully Georg Morris Cohen Brandes

The appalling thing about war is that it kills all love of truth.

Character | Love | Truth | War |

Rupert Brooke

The worst of slaves is he whom passion rules.

Character | Passion |

Francis William Bourdillon

The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.

Character | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mind |

Jean de La Bruyère

The strongest passion is fear.

Character | Fear | Passion |

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

A woman’s head is always influenced by her heart; but a man’s heart is always influenced by his head.

Character | Heart | Man | Woman |

Thomas Brooks

Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much; humbled.

Character | Grace | Heart | Love | Mercy | Nothing | Sin | Will |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

Character | Heart | Joy | Mind |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored - it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

Character | Evil | Prejudice | Race |

William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

Character | Man | Perception |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

It is one thing to be carried through an endless life, another thing to embrace the whole presence of an endless life together, which is manifestly proper to the divine Mind. The temporal world seems to emulate in part that which it cannot fully obtain or express, tying itself to whatever presence there is in this exiguous and fleeting moment - a presence which, since it carries a certain image of that abiding Presence, gives to whatever may partake of it the quality of seeming to have being. But because it could not stay, it undertook an infinite journey of time; and so it came to pass that, by going, it continued that life, whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Mind | Time | World |

Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun

The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.

Ability | Character | Love |

Jean de La Bruyère

He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.

Character | Recompense | Success |

Phillips Brooks

It is better to inspire the heart with a noble sentiment than to teach the mind a truth of science.

Better | Character | Heart | Mind | Science | Sentiment | Teach | Truth |

James Boswell

There is no passion so distressing as fear, which gives us great pain and makes us appear contemptible in our own eyes to the last degree. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

Character | Fear | Government | Men | Order | Pain | Passion |

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

There is nothing that can be called a “Self,” and there is no such thing as “mine” in all the world.

Character | Nothing | Self | World |

Brahma-Vaivarta Purana NULL

Piety and selfless deeds elevate the inhabitants of this earth to exalted spiritual estates... self-serving acts reduce them to the realms beneath, of sorrow and pain, rebirths among birds and vermin, or out of the wombs of pigs and beasts of the wild, or among trees. Action is a function of character, which in turn is controlled by custom. This is the whole substance of the secret. This knowledge is the ferry across the ocean of hell to beatitude. For all the animate and inanimate objects in this world... are transitory, like dream. The gods on high, the mute trees and stones, are but apparitions in the fantasy. Good and evil attaching to a person are perishable as bubbles. In the cycles of time they alternate. The wise are attached to neither.

Action | Character | Custom | Deeds | Earth | Evil | Good | Hell | Knowledge | Pain | Piety | Self | Sorrow | Time | Wise | World | Deeds |