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

Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride | Spirit | Wisdom |

Bruno Bettelheim

Reading and what it can contribute to one's life is not something that pertains only to the ego and its conscious mind; it is also deeply rooted in the unconsciousness. Those who retain all through life a deep commitment to the literary harbor in their consciousness some residue of their earlier conviction that reading is an art permitting access to magic worlds, although very few of them are aware that they subconsciously believe this to be so.

Art | Commitment | Consciousness | Ego | Life | Life | Magic | Mind | Reading | Unconsciousness | Wisdom | Art |

Hayim Nahim Bialik, also Chaim or Haim

Language is but spirit crystallized and substantiated.

Language | Spirit | Wisdom |

Joe Bayly, fully Joseph Tate Bayly

In an age of the inconsequential and frivolous, reading fills our minds with the consequential. Reading involves stewardship of a mind, that was created in the divine image, to think great thoughts as well as to notice the small sparrow. Reading stretches the mind.

Age | Mind | Reading | Stewardship | Wisdom | Think |

Bertha Bailey

The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to ensure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only be aware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you , until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.

Appreciation | Beauty | Life | Life | Order | Right | Spirit | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | World | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |

Frederika Bremer

People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they; then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much; more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them.

Blame | Cause | Confidence | Experience | Good | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mistrust | People | Pity | Reason | Spirit | Wisdom | Friendship | Learn |

Phillips Brooks

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is

Action | Desire | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

They who have read about everything are thought to understand everything, but it is not always so; reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections - we must chew them over again.

Enough | Knowledge | Mind | Reading | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Thought | Understand |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Reality | Spirit | Wisdom |

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 |

George Dawson

Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading are read.

Books | Reading | Society | Wisdom | Worth | Society | Gossip |

George B. Cortelyou, fully George Bruce Cortelyou

The greatest asset of any nation is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit - the will to win and the courage to work.

Courage | Danger | People | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work | Danger |

Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

Conversation by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual illumination of the soul. God’s grace lights up the dark heart.

Conversation | God | Grace | Heart | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |

Jeremy Collier

Despair is the offspring of fear; of laziness, and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and often of honesty too. I would not despair unless I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate; and signed and sealed by necessity.

Despair | Fate | Fear | Honesty | Impatience | Laziness | Misfortune | Necessity | Resolution | Spirit | Wisdom | Misfortune |

Bartley Crum, fully Bartley Cavanaugh Crum

I believe, with all my heart, that the Spirit of God is within every man, however mean, ugly, or diseased; and that when we visit indignities upon other men, we are affronting our Creator, and we are also harming ourselves.

God | Heart | Man | Men | Spirit | Ugly | Wisdom | God |

William Cowper

I must think forever: would an eternal train of my usual thoughts be either worthy of me or useful to me? I must feel forever: would an eternal reign of my present spirit and desires please or satisfy me? I must act forever: would an eternal course of my habitual conduct bring happiness, or even bear reflection?... Habits are soon assumed; but when we endeavor to strip them off, it is being flayed alive.

Conduct | Eternal | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Wisdom | Think |