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 Congreve

One minute gives invention to destroy; what to rebuild a whole age employ.

Age | Destroy | Invention | Wisdom |

Norman Douglas, aka George Norman Douglas

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

Age | Character | Man | Wisdom |

Betty Edwards

Many adults draw childlike drawings and many children give up drawing at age nine or ten. These children grow up to become the adults who say they never could draw and can't even draw a straight line. The same adults, however, if questioned, often say that they would have liked to learn to draw well, just for their own satisfaction at solving the drawing problems that plagued them as children. But they felt that they had to stop drawing because they couldn't learn how to draw.

Age | Children | Problems | Wisdom | Learn |

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

In youth we learn; in age we understand.

Age | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |

E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster

The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

Care | Liberty | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Beware of fatiguing them by ill-judged exactness. If virtue offers itself to the child under a melancholy and constrained aspect, while liberty and license present themselves under an agreeable form, all is lost, and your labor is in vain.

Labor | Liberty | Melancholy | Present | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Child |

Clifton Fadiman

All children talk with integrity up to about the age of five, when they fall victim to the influences of the adult world and mass entertainment. It is then that they begin, all unconsciously, to become plausible actors. The product of this process is known as maturity, or you and me.

Age | Children | Entertainment | Integrity | Wisdom | World | Victim |

Edward Everett

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.

Better | Education | Liberty | Wisdom |

David Everett

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Better | Education | Liberty | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.

Control | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Liberty | Man | Public | Right | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |

John Monroe Gibson

The great trouble with the skepticism of the age is, that it is not thorough enough. It questions everything but its own foundations.

Age | Enough | Skepticism | Wisdom | Trouble |

Benjamin Franklin

Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Liberty | Little | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it alter, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the moment arrives when shame and fear awaken; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural development begin.

Age | Childhood | Fear | Individual | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Paradise | Sense | Shame | Wisdom |

Paul Géraldy, pen name of Paul Lefevre

No age or time of life, no position or circumstance, has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing!

Age | Life | Life | Position | Right | Success | Time | Wisdom |

Henry Giles

Not until right is founded upon reverence will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal.

Duty | Eternal | Liberty | Love | Principles | Reverence | Right | Will | Wisdom |