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

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The dreary thing about most new causes is that they are praised in such very old terms. Every new religion bores us with the same stale rhetoric about closer fellowship and the higher life.

Life | Life | Religion | Rhetoric | Wisdom | Old |

Thomas N. Carruthers

Faith that the thing can be done is essential to any great achievement.

Achievement | Faith | Wisdom |

Geoffrey Chaucer

Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.

Man | Truth | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.

Fame | Hope | Love | Man | Money | Wisdom |

Robert Collier

Visualize this thing that you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print and begin to build.

Wisdom |

Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

It is the easiest thing in the world for us to obey God when He command us to do what we like, and to trust Him when the path is all sunshine. The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark, and through the dark. Let us be assured of this, that if the lesson and the rod are of His appointing, and that His all-wise love has engineered the deep tunnel of trial on the heavenward road, He will never desert us during the discipline. The vital thing for us is not to deny and desert Him.

Discipline | Faith | God | Lesson | Love | Trust | Will | Wisdom | Wise | World | Trial | God |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |

William Cobbett

Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food an raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty - the shame of being though poor - it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.

Poverty | Shame | Weakness | Wisdom |

Robert Collier

People blame their environment. There is one thing to blame - and only one -- themselves.

Blame | People | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities.

Consideration | Means | Men | Qualities | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Robert Collier

Your belief that you can do the thing gives your thought forces their power.

Belief | Power | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. but you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Change | Conservatism | Wisdom |

Adam Clarke

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent ore the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real and immediate cause.

Accident | Cause | Chance | Ignorance | Men | Nature | Reason | Wisdom | Words |

Robert Collier

The great thing is the start - to see an opportunity for service, and to start doing it, even though in the beginning you serve but a single customer - and him for nothing.

Beginning | Nothing | Opportunity | Service | Wisdom |

John Dewey

Since changes are going on any way, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.

Enough | Events | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.

Justice | Wisdom |

Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, aka Baron Pierre de Coubertin

The most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

Important | Life | Life | Struggle | Wisdom |