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

Sappho NULL

I can reveal to you that I wished to die - For with much weeping she left me Saying: "Sappho - what suffering is ours! For it is against my will that I leave you." In answer, I said: "Go, happily remembering me For you know what we shared and pursued - If not, I wish you to see again our [former joys]... The many braids of rose and violet you [wreathed] Around yourself at my side And the many garlands of flowers With which you adorned your soft neck: With royal oils from [fresh flowers] You anointed [ yourself ] And on soft beds fulfilled your longing [For me]

Awakening | Blame | Chance | Compassion | Earth | Enough | Fortune | Fun | Giving | Good | Immortality | Journey | Joy | Kindness | Learning | Man | Mind | Miracles | Need | Pity | Pleasure | Poverty | Pride | Self | Slander | Space | Suffering | Time | Vision | Wealth | Will | World | Slander | Happiness |

Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

The one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period [is] contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.

Superiority |

Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms.

Model | Present | Space | System |

Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

Power | Space | World |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. Since I was cut from the reed-bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back. At any gathering I am there, mingling in the laughing and grieving, a friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that. Body flowing out of spirit, spirit up from body: no concealing that mixing. But it's not given us to see the soul. The reed flute is fire, not wind. Be that empty. Hear the love-fire tangled in the reed notes, as bewilderment melts into wine. The reed is a friend to all who want the fabric torn and drawn away. The reed is hurt and salve combining. Intimacy and longing for intimacy, one song. A disastrous surrender, and a fine love, together.

Light | Little | Means | Soul | Space | Spirit | Wants | Will | Old |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off. That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief.

Better | Joy | Sorrow | Space | Will |

Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart

There's a total and complete silence in that beautiful view and the realization, of course, that you're going 25,000 miles an hour.

Earth | Space | Learn |

Rupert Brooke

But there's a wisdom in women, of more than they have known, and thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own.

Space |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

Space | Truth |

John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

If then we have angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present also.

Acquaintance | Attention | Earnestness | God | Hurry | Man | Reading | Space | Tomorrow | Will | God |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.

Beauty | Fame | Superiority | Wealth | Beauty |

Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo

The best pastimes for a true enjoyer of leisure who has to stay at home . . . reading by the fireside. . . . Listening to music.

Music | Need | Poetry | Space | Time |

Samuel Butler

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Respect | Reverence | Superiority | Respect |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place.

Superiority |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Men | People | Superiority |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.

People | Superiority |

Sydney J. Harris

It is certain that nothing we have brings us happiness, but only what we are, what we feel about ourselves.

Superiority |

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

When the Lord is known all fetters fall off; with the cessation of miseries, birth and death come to an end. From meditation on Him there arises, after the dissolution of the body, the third state, that of universal lordship. And lastly, the aspirant, transcending that state also, abides in the complete Bliss of Brahman.

Knowledge | Men | Space | Will |

Simone Weil

There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of hought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like to the extent that is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.

Absolute | Absurd | Attention | Good | Longing | Love | Man | Object | Power | Reality | Space | Thought | Unique | World | Thought |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.

Existence | Love | Space | Time |