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

William Shakespeare

ORLANDO: Who stays it still withal? ROSALIND: With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.

Men | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

O, these deliberate fools, when they do choose, they have the wisdom by their wit to lose.

Humanity | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Please you, I'll tell you as we pass along, That you will wonder what hath fortuned. Come, Proteus, 'tis your penance but to hear The story of your loves discovered; That done, our day of marriage shall be yours: One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

Heart | Words |

Edward Scribner Ames

It has become a conviction with me that psychology may in the long run do much to change the conception of the fundamental nature of the religious life, which, on the whole, is now too generally made a matter of doctrine. It is too intellectual At the doors of most churches one is met by required beliefs in a particular conception of God, in a speculative theory about the divinity of Christ, definite ideas concerning sin and salvation, the efficacy of ordinances, and the claims of supernatural revelation. What people are really seeking is access to refreshing fountains of life, sources of strength and guidance. They crave association with people and institutions which may convey to them a sense of what is most worthwhile in life and what may furnish impulsion toward real and enduring values. They know pretty well what those values are when allowed to let their own deepest desires express themselves.

Beginning | Divinity | Excitement | History | Meaning | Metaphysics | Philosophy | Revelation | Science | Temper | Theology | Thought | Work | Thought |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose action are not publicly canvassed and discussed.

Rank | Thought | Thought |

Saichō NULL

Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly Mahāyāna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly Hīnayāna. These are temples where only the Hīnayāna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the Mahāyāna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [Hīnayāna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna] practices are carried out.

Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |

Edwin Paxton Hood

Of all the know-nothing persons in this world, commend us to the man who has "never known a day's illness." He is a moral dunce, one who has lost the greatest lesson of life; who has skipped the finest lecture in that great school of humanity, the sick-chamber.

Thought | Thought |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Every style formed elaborately on any model must be affected and straight-laced.

Change | Mind | Study | Thought | Thought |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.

Heart | Nature | Thought | Watchfulness | Think | Thought |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.

Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |

Hu Shih, or Hú Shì

The Chinese people, too, went through all kinds of vicissitudes in their religious development.

Thought | Thought |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. - They create an ideal character the perfections of which compensate in some degree for imperfections of their own.

Immortality | Instinct | Life | Life | Words |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.

Earth | Thought | Words | Thought |

Edward Scribner Ames

Nothing yet proves that continued progress is inevitable, but that it is possible no one but an extreme skeptic or pessimist can doubt.

Bible | Example | Intelligence | Life | Life | Reflection | Rest | Revelation | Security | Words | Bible |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

I am afraid that you may lose face.

Right | Will | Words |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

Thought | Wise | Thought |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

Let a woman be correct in manner and upright in character in order to serve her husband. Let her live in purity and quietness of spirit, and attend to her own affairs. Let her love not gossip and silly laughter. Let her cleanse and purify and arrange in order the wine and the food for the offerings to the ancestors. When a woman observes such principles as these, then she may be said to continue ancestral worship.

Contempt | Harmony | Husband | Love | Rebuke | Relationship | Wife | Words |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

As Yin and Yang are not of the same nature, so man and woman have different characteristics. The distinctive quality of the Yang is rigidity; the function of the Yin is yielding. Man is honored for strength; a woman is beautiful on account of her gentleness. Hence there arose the common saying: "A man though born like a wolf may, it is feared, become a weak monstrosity; a woman though born like a mouse may, it is feared, become a tiger."

Appearance | Need | Virtue | Virtue | Woman | Words | Work |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

To guard carefully her chastity; to control circumspectly her behavior; in every motion to exhibit modesty; and to model each act on the best usage, this is womanly virtue.

Words |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A person with a bad name is already half hanged, saith the old proverb.

Study | Thought | Thought |