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

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

By the Grace of the Saints, I sing the Praises of the Ocean of virtue; after countless incarnations, I have been released.

Knowledge | Man |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Peace and tranquility have come; the Guru, the Lord of the Universe, has brought it. The burning sins have departed, O my Siblings of Destiny.

Good | Little | Lord | Men | Mind | Will |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The river of human life meanders along, through many a valley, leaps over many a cliff, loses itself in many a marsh and seeks to empty itself in the ocean of Divine Grace; though, what happens is that it falls into the undrinkable expanse of salt.

Cause | Contempt | Riches | Sloth | Riches |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Those, who indulge excessively in material and sensual pleasures approach death with fear and inevitably fall prey to the wrath of death.

Ends | Ignorance |

Václav Havel

We had all become used to the totalitarian system and accepted it as an unchangeable fact and thus helped to perpetuate it. In other words, we are all — though naturally to differing extents — responsible for the operation of the totalitarian machinery. None of us is just its victim. We are all also its co-creators.

Belief | Cause | Global | Man | Time |

Václav Havel

Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them.

Václav Havel

Seemingly endless negotiations finally led to the division of Czechoslovakia. It had one great advantage: it proceeded calmly, without violence, major conflicts, or significant unsolved issues. This unusually positive split brought us worldwide respect. But it also had one disadvantage: a matter of such importance as the division of a country into two new ones was not decided by the citizens in a referendum, as would be appropriate in a democratic society. Rather, it was mostly treated as a technical matter, almost as if it were an accounting operation. Perhaps for this reason, the end of Czechoslovakia was accompanied by an unpleasant aftertaste and awkward feelings. No significant part of the citizenry protested the division then, but no significant part celebrated it either. It was as if there was nothing to say, as if the public had more or less breathed a sigh of relief at the endless, traumatizing bargaining finally being behind us. All that is now long-gone — is history — and after all this time, I cannot help but feel that no matter how queerly it happened then, it is a good thing that it happened. Evidently, most peoples must taste full statehood for at least a while in order to learn to cooperate with others. Czechs and Slovaks may be closer today than ever before. There is no animosity, and they are united in their goals: to fully participate in the European and global integration processes and, in their own interest, to gradually forsake some of their countries' sovereignty in favor of increasing influence in the life of communities vastly larger and more powerful than countries are. We live in an interconnected world, and we — Czechs and Slovaks — walk hand in hand in it. And that, of course, is what is most important.

Václav Havel

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Ends | Hope | Life | Life | Work |

Vance Havner

There's a price to pay to be a holy man of God. You have to buck the current because the tide's running the other way.

Ends |

Vance Havner

My father said dirt, debt, and the devil were related so I decided to keep away from all three as far as possible.

Ends | Grave | Nothing | People |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

For joys and sorrows are their dear delight; even as a lover takes the weal and woe felt for his lady. Such is wisdom's might.

Church |

Tryon Edwards

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.

Books | Power |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

What is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr.Wernher von Braun!

Worth |

Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed

Cost | Mistake | Training |

Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.

As I associated with more and more different types, I realized that to make it, you had to get along with almost everybody. If you dislike the people you work with, you’d better not show it. I learned that to be a good leader, I had to strike a delicate balance.

Good |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.

Compensation | Desire | Ends | Faith | Freedom | Nations | Peace | Rights | Safe | World |

Thucydides NULL

But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an objective, the revenues of the states increasing, tyrannies were established almost everywhere.

Contempt | Enemy | Prudence | Prudence |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.

Aptitude | Conscience | Contempt | Conversation | Freedom | Memory | Talent |

Hugh Blair

The least degree of ambiguity, which leaves the mind in suspense as to the meaning, ought to be avoided with the greatest care.

Admiration | Contempt | History | Love | Public |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

I do not know why the dead do not come back to life. Perhaps death is so wonderful, in ways we cannot comprehend, that they prefer it over and above their friends and loved ones, although I am inclined to doubt that be the case.

Church | Enough | Man |