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

Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner

Young children possess the ability to cut across the customary categories; to appreciate usually undiscerned links among realms, to respond effectively in a parallel manner to events which are usually categorized differently, and to capture these original conceptions in words.

Ability | Children | Events | Wisdom | Words |

Benjamin Franklin

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter

Circumstances | Man | Wisdom |

William Harvey

Every affection of the mind that is attended with either pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation whose influence extends to the heart, and there induces change from the natural constitution, in the temperature, the pulse and the rest, which impairing all nutrition in its source and abating the powers at large, it is no wonder that various forms of incurable disease in the extremities and in the trunk are the consequence, inasmuch as in such circumstances the whole body labors under the effects of vitiated nutrition and want of native heat.

Agitation | Body | Cause | Change | Circumstances | Disease | Fear | Heart | Hope | Influence | Mind | Pain | Pleasure | Rest | Wisdom | Wonder |

David Hume

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behavior.

Action | Behavior | Circumstances | History | Human nature | Mankind | Men | Nature | Nothing | Principles | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

We find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and most humane in political practice.

Eternity | Events | Practice | Theology | Time | Wisdom |

David Hume

So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any ties between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. But there still remains one method of avoiding this conclusion, and one source which we have not yet examined.

Events | Life | Life | Meaning | Method | Nature | Power | Sense | Sentiment | Wisdom | Words |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Your thoughts are the most powerful part of you. They actually create your world... It is from our thoughts that we systematically draw the people, places, and circumstances into our lives that eventually become our reality.

Circumstances | People | Reality | Wisdom | World |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Everything begins with an idea. Your thoughts are the blueprint for your life. Your thoughts today create your world of tomorrow. Change your thoughts and you will change your world. Through the power of your thinking, you are continuously drawing kinds of events into your life. You have absolute control over your reactions.

Absolute | Change | Control | Events | Life | Life | Power | Thinking | Tomorrow | Will | Wisdom | World |

Charles Kingsley

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, or forced to do your best, will bred in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know.

Control | Diligence | God | Self | Self-control | Strength | Will | Wisdom | Work | God |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Cause | Circumstances | Injustice | Injustice | Philanthropy | Wisdom |

André Maurois, born born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.

Desire | Events | Men | Regard | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Circumstances | Progress | War | Wisdom |

Albert Schweitzer

The basic significance of all difficulty is that it reorients us from the external to the spiritual. the meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. but one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual.

Difficulty | Events | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | World |

John B. Sheerin

Happiness is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.

Circumstances | Wisdom | Happiness |