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

Charles Reade

When two loving hearts are torn asunder, it is a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action than the bereaved twin that petrifies at home.

Action | Better | Wisdom |

Francis Quarles

Necessity of action takes away fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.

Action | Fear | Fortune | Necessity | Resolution | Wisdom |

Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

Language is slow; the mastery of wants doth teach it to the infant, drop by drop, as brooklets gather. Yet there is a love, simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years, the language of the soul, told through the eye. The stammering lip oft mars the perfect thought; but the heart's lightning hath no obstacle. Quick glances, like the thrilling wires, transfuse the telegraphic look.

Discipline | Heart | Language | Love | Soul | Teach | Thought | Wants | Wisdom |

Richard Savage

By woe the soul to daring action steals; by woe in plaintless patience it excels.

Action | Daring | Patience | Soul | Wisdom | Woe |

Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation.

Action | Aid | Cause | Crime | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.

Duty | Intention | Language | Meditation | Neglect | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |

Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Action | Good | Inevitable | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas that it is very deservedly driven out of good company.

Good | Ideas | Language | Wisdom | Wit |

William Howard Taft

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

Action | Majority | People | Respect | Rights | Self | Wisdom | Respect |

George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner

Music has always had its own syntax, its own vocabulary and symbolic means. Indeed, it is with mathematics the principal language of the mind when the mind is in a condition of non-verbal feeling.

Language | Mathematics | Means | Mind | Music | Wisdom |

Arthur Warwick

The speech of the tongue is best known to men; God best understands the language of the heart.

God | Heart | Language | Men | Speech | Wisdom | God |

Mary Church Terrell

Please stop using the word “Negro”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven varieties of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.

Language | People | Wisdom | World |

Lyall Watson

All societies create their own worlds, using language and folklore to impose an arbitrary order on the complexity of the cosmos. This ordering of reality helps make sense of things by interpreting information in ways which are compatible with what is already known.

Language | Order | Reality | Sense | Wisdom |

Book of Golden Precepts, aka The Book of Golden Precepts NULL

Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.

Action | Mercy | Sin |

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, known also as Fares Chidiac, Faris Al Chidiac

Every language in the world has something beautiful and something ugly about it, for language is nothing more than the expression of the activities, thoughts, and actions of human beings. There is naturally always something to blame and something to praise.

Blame | Language | Nothing | Praise | Ugly | World |

Dhyani Ywahoo

We can listen to the voice of the Earth as she shakes and sings her song expressing her tiredness. She is calling us to attention, to be alert, to recognize that now is the time to transform selfish thought and action to compassionate caretaking. Do we want a world of peace and harmony? Are we willing to make that peace within ourselves? Will we call it forth? It is your choice. Your thought and action make a difference.

Action | Attention | Choice | Earth | Harmony | Peace | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Thought |

Edward Young

Cares are employments; and without employ the soul is on a rack; the rack of rest, to souls most adverse; action all their joy.

Action | Joy | Rest | Soul | Wisdom |