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

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Bring the history of the past not as a gloomy memento mori, but as a friendly forget-me-not, whose lessons we may recall with love.

History | Love | Past | Wisdom |

Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

There is no more dangerous misconception than this which misconstrues the arms race as the cause rather than a symptom of the tensions and divisions which threaten nuclear war. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.

Cause | History | Past | Peace | Race | War | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work. That is what the vital impetus, passing through matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if its power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could come to it from without. But the impetus is finite, and it has been given once for all. It cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict.

Doubt | Effort | Energy | Evolution | Life | Life | Power | Will | Wisdom | Work | World |

Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett

You have to live on twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness - the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends! - depends on that!

Evolution | Health | Money | Pleasure | Respect | Right | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Happiness |

Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

For all his learning or sophistication, man is still instinctively reaching toward that force beyond. Only arrogance can deny its existence and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand. In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is.

Arrogance | Evidence | Existence | Force | Learning | Man | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.

Faith | History | Mankind | Men | Wisdom |

Gotthard Booth

Love means that the adults be genuinely concerned with the evolution of the true nature of the child. Children are not able to respond to a love which tries to fashion them according to the concept of the adult, no matter how good the latter's intention may be.

Children | Evolution | Good | Intention | Love | Means | Nature | Wisdom |

Kay Boyle

There is only one history of importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in and the history of what you came to believe in.

History | Wisdom |

Bruce Burton

The observation is that, generally speaking, poverty of speech is the outward evidence of poverty of mind

Evidence | Mind | Observation | Poverty | Speech | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

Age | History | Knowing | Men | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Nicholas Murray Butler

There are five tests of the evidence of education - correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue; refined and gentle manners, the result of fixed habits of thought and action; sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth, and a character based on those standards; power and habit of reflection, efficiency or the power to do.

Action | Appreciation | Beauty | Character | Correctness | Education | Efficiency | Evidence | Habit | Manners | Mother | Power | Precision | Reflection | Sound | Thought | Wisdom | Worth | Precision | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |

Samuel Butler

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

Death | History | Opinion | Public | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Joan Brown Campbell

The violence that surrounds us in our streets and in our homes and in our world is evidence that we have succumbed to the temptation of the desert. We face and deep and profound spiritual crisis.

Evidence | Temptation | Wisdom | World | Temptation |

Paul Copperman

Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach those of their parents.

Attainment | Education | History | Parents | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Jean Cocteau

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.

Fable | History | Reality | Truth | Wisdom |

Donald Davidson

Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course.)

History | Wisdom | World |

Albert Cooper, fully Albert Glen Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts as the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of the reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

George Croly

All history is but a romance unless it is studied as an example.

Example | History | Romance | Wisdom |