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

Thomas Tickell

Vain man would trace the mystic maze with foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God, his balance hold, and guide his angry rod, new-mould the spheres, and mend the skies’ design, and sound th’ immense with his short scanty line. Do thou, my soul, the destined period wait, when God shall solve the dark decrees of fate, His now unequal dispensation clear, and make all wise and beautiful appear.

Balance | Character | Design | Fate | God | Man | Soul | Sound | Wisdom | Wise | God |

Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL

I thought all the while, I was leaning how to live, but now I know, I was learning how to die.

Learning | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Zitkala-Sa, also Zitkala-Ša, missionary-given name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin NULL

The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings.

Character | Nothing |

Tze-sze NULL

The superior man is quiet and calm, waiting for the appointments of Heaven, while the mean man walks in dangerous paths, looking for lucky occurrences.

Character | Heaven | Man | Quiet | Waiting |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Philosophy... consists in keeping the demon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor feeling the need of another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind.

Death | Man | Mind | Need | Nothing | Philosophy | Purpose | Purpose | Waiting | Wisdom |

François Arago, fully François Jean Dominique Arago

A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.

Comfort | Common Sense | Estimation | Genius | Mankind | Peace | People | Rank | Reason | Science | Sense | Time | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |

Ani NULL

He who hates waiting enters without being invited.

Waiting | Wisdom |

Horace Traubel

Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul...

Birth | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mistake | Possessions | Self | Soul | Old |

Ralph Venning

The Hebrews have a saying that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns; it is not so much the matter that is done, but the matter how it is done, that God minds. Now how much, but how well! It is the well-doing that meets with a well-done. Let us therefore serve God, not nominally or verbally, but adverbially.

Character | God | God |

Henry Wotton, fully Sir Henry Wotton

How happy is he born or taught, That serveth not another’s will; Whose armor is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies,— What are you when the moon shall rise? An itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches. I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff. Idle time not idly spent. Now all nature seemed in love, and birds had drawn their valentines.

Character | Happy | Nature | People | Skill | Thought | Time | Truth | Will |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.

Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |

George H. Bender

There is no one who cannot find a place for himself in our kind of world. Each of us has some unique capacity waiting for realization. Every person is valuable in his own existence - for himself alone.

Capacity | Existence | Unique | Waiting | Wisdom | World |