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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is a great mistake of many ardent students that they trust too much to their books, and do not draw from their own resources - forgetting that of all sophists our own reason is that which abuses us least.

Books | Mistake | Reason | Trust | Wisdom |

Samuel Smiles

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Discovery | Failure | Mistake | Success | Will | Wisdom | Failure | Learn |

Tibetan Saying NULL

Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.

Mistake | Understanding | Wisdom |

Harry Wolfson, fully Harry Austryn Wolfson

We often mistake a desire of the body for a yearning of the soul.

Body | Desire | Mistake | Soul | Wisdom |

Joe Boot

To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life.

Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Mistake | Pain | Peace | Reason | Suffering | Happiness |

Sandra Carey

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom – one helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

Knowledge | Life | Life | Mistake | Wisdom |

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Destiny | Mistake | Time |

Tom Butler-Bowdon

Personal growth is often the result not of doing something new, but of seeing the same things in a new light. We all have mental maps of our world that we mistake for the actual territory. By clinging on to old maps we fail to see the true lie of the land and get lost.

Growth | Land | Light | Mistake | World | Old |

Aelred Graham

Where religion goes wrong it is because, in one form or another, men have made the mistake of trying to turn to God without turning away from self.

God | Men | Mistake | Religion | Self | Wrong | God |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.

Intolerance | Man | Nature | Loss |

Doug Larson

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

Conscience | Memory | Mistake | People |

Ramón Magsaysay

The mistake the world is making with the simple peoples is to try and hurry them into political concepts they don’t understand and aren’t prepared to cope with. I know. I am a peasant myself.

Hurry | Mistake | World | Understand |

New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL

It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.

Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

What is it? Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake?

God | Man | Mistake | God |