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

Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.

Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. Do everything with excitement, by the spirit of grace.

Excitement | Grace | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Wisdom | Work |

John Fischer

The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different - to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.

Body | Chance | Effort | Mind | Opportunity | Spirit | Unique | Wisdom | Child |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached.

Man | Past | Self | Spirit | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Thought |

Benjamin Franklin

Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.

Man | Poverty | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new.

Day | Good | Little | Men | People | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom | Words |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words; the spirit in which we act is the great matter.

Good | Spirit | Wisdom | Words |

Jascha Heifetz

Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.

Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Books | Ecstasy | Good | People | Reading | Remorse | Sorrow | Will | Wisdom |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

Books | Insult | Reading | Wisdom | Insult |

Edward Hill

To empty one's mind of all thoughts and refill the void with a spirit greater than oneself is to expand the mind into a realm not accessible by conventional processes of reason.

Mind | Reason | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes - the vulgar. The high point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dispense with the eternal necessity of never being twice the same.

Abstract | Beauty | Elegance | Eternal | Necessity | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The body oppressed by excess bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with.

Body | Earth | Excess | Mind | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit also we may breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it.

Aspiration | Spirit | Wisdom | Aspiration |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

Even if governmental conduct of business could give us more efficiency instead of less efficiency, the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It would destroy political equality. It would increase rather than decrease abuse and corruption. It would stifle initiative and invention. It would undermine the development of leadership. It would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It would extinguish equality and opportunity. It would dry up the spirit of liberty and progress.

Abuse | Business | Conduct | Corruption | Destroy | Efficiency | Equality | Initiative | Invention | Liberty | Opportunity | People | Progress | Spirit | Wisdom | Business |

Thomas Hughes

He went down to the school with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart - the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world.

Heart | Lesson | Spirit | Wisdom | World |

Kanekuk NULL

Some of our chiefs make the claim that the land belongs to us. It is not what the Great Spirit told me. He told me that the lands belong to Him, that no people owns the land; that AI was not to forget to tell this to the white people when I met them in council.

Land | People | Spirit | Wisdom |