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

Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Morality | Scandal |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

Man | Wise |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Opinion | Sin | Forgive |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is sacrificed to talent every day... The difference between Talent and Genius is, that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard... Genius is power; talent is applicability.

Day | Genius | Power | Talent |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all one pattern. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Lesson | Men | Opinion | Sin | Forgive | Learn |

René Descartes

There is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible.

Body | Mind | Nature |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is a difference of opinion.

Opinion | Sin | Forgive |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Happy | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

René Descartes

There is no better means of arriving at a knowledge of our passions than to examine the difference which exists between soul and body in order to know to which of the two we must attribute each one of the functions which are within us.

Better | Body | Knowledge | Means | Order | Soul |

Robin Sharma

Happiness and a life of deep fulfillment come when you commit yourself, from the very core of your soul, to spending your highest human talents on a purpose that makes a difference in others’ lives.

Fulfillment | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul |

Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor.

Genius | Talent |

Shirley Chisholm

Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.

Accident |

Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

It is attention, more than any difference between minds and men.—In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genius of discovery in science.—It was this that led Newton to the invention of fluxions, and the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to find out the circulation of the blood, and Davy to those views which laid the foundation of modern chemistry.

Discovery | Genius | Good | Invention | Nothing | Usefulness | World | Discovery |

Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies.

Abstract | Age | Ambition | Anticipation | Attention | Contentment | Death | Discovery | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Genius | History | Indolence | Intelligence | Invention | Little | Meditation | Men | Mind | Object | Old age | Perfection | Power | Will | Discovery |

Socrates NULL

There is no difference between knowledge and temperance: for he who knows what is good and embraces it, who knows what is bad and avoids it, is learned and temperate.

Good | Knowledge |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

In a republic, we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction.

Learn |

Thomas Fuller

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins.

Man |