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

Samuel Smiles

Necessity is always the first stimulus to industry, and those who conduct it with prudence, perseverance, and energy will rarely fail. Viewed in this light, the necessity of labor is not a chastisement, but a blessing, - the very root and spring of all that we call progress in individuals and civilization in nations.

Individual | Reform | Will |

Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusions.

Earth | Means | Mother | Problems | Will | Think |

Samuel Richardson

A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

Better | Mother | Wife |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

Confidence | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Success |

Sydney J. Harris

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world — it is the courage to be who you are.

Absurd | Children | Fallacy | Mother |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

Father | Mother | Regard | Wishes | Obstacle |

Simone Weil

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

Chance | Father | Meditation | Mother |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

Church | Doubt | Heart | Mission | Mother | Pardon | Will |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Imagination | Mother |

Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

[A doctor] preserves, if it already exists, the health and good habit of the flesh, or if absent, recalls it… But the scope of our art is to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God.

Envy | Glory | God | Heaven | Mother | Reason | Soul | Will | God | Afraid | Understand |

Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that you have created your image in me, so that I may remember you, think of you, love you. But this image is so obliterated and worn away by wickedness, it is so obscured by the smoke of sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do, unless you renew and reform it. I am not attempting, O Lord, to penetrate your loftiness, for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it, but I desire in some measure to understand your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this too I believe, that "unless I believe, I shall not understand."

Desire | Heart | Love | Order | Reform | Understanding | Think | Understand |

Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

And therefore, first in the holy Synod of Nicaea, the gathering of the three hundred and eighteen chosen men, united by the Holy Ghost, as far as in him lay, he [St. Athanasius] stayed the disease. Though not yet ranked among the Bishops, he held the first rank among the members of the Council, for preference was given to virtue just as much as to office

Darkness | Father | Light | Mother | Nature | People | Spirit | Truth | World | Old |

Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

But on whom shall our poor heart lavish its love? Who shall be found that is great enough to be the recipient of its treasures? Will a human being know how to comprehend them, and above all will he be able to repay? There exists but one Being capable of comprehending love; it is Jesus; He alone can give us back infinitely more than we shall ever give to him.

God | Good | Mother | Words | God |

Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Your heart is not so narrow that the world can satisfy it entirely; nothing but God can fill it.

Reform | Will |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

Pride is utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.

Action | Anger | Daughter | Enlightenment | Evidence | Future | Hope | Judgment | Lord | Man | Mother | Prayer | Sorrow | Wealth | Work |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

A person is at the beginning of a prayer when he succeeds in removing distractions which at the beginning beset him. He is at the middle of the prayer when the mind concentrates only on what he is meditating and contemplating. He reaches the end when, with the Lord, the prayer enraptures him.

Ability | Blessings | God | Good | Little | Man | Men | Mother | Pride | Purpose | Purpose | Receive | Skill | Will | Work | God |

Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

Ambition | Mother | Ambition |

Theodore Parker

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

Better | Good | Indispensable | Lesson | Men | Reform | Rights | Spirit | Wise | Work |