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

Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival

Every thing existing on the physical plain is an exteriorization of a thought which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought and in accordance with that one's responsibility at the conjunction of time, condition and place. This law of thought is Destiny. Thinking is the basic factor in shaping human destiny. The machinery of the law is nature. The purpose of the universe is to make all units of matter conscious of progressively higher degrees.

Destiny | Law | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Thinking | Thought | Time | Universe | Wisdom | Thought |

Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Thinking leads man to knowledge. He may see and hear, and read and learn whatever he pleases, and as much as he pleases; he will never know anything of it, except that which he has thought over, that which by thinking he has made the property of his own mind. Is it then saying too much if I say that man, by thinking only, becomes truly man? Take away thought from man's life, and what remains?

Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Property | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Learn | Thought |

Jane Porter

Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must not be the mere shell that we admire, but the thought that this shell is only the beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.

Beauty | Mind | Perfection | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Thought | Value |

Philip Bennett Power

To tell the truth, however, family and poverty have done more to support me than I have to support them. They have compelled me to make exertions that I hardly thought myself capable of; and often when on the eve of despairing, they have forced me, like a coward in a corner, to fight like a hero, not for myself, but for my wife and little ones.

Family | Hero | Little | Poverty | Thought | Truth | Wife | Wisdom | Thought |

Earl Rivers, Richard Woodville (or Wydeville), 1st Earl Rivers

The thought is the myrrour of the man, wherein he may behold his beaute & his filth.

Man | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Paul Reichmann

If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception.

Belief | Cause | Common Sense | Memory | Pain | Perception | Power | Sense | Thought | Wisdom | Absurdity | Think | Thought |

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean pure and not coarse nature), all his being acts at once like a simple sensuous unity, like a harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the receptive faculty and the spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet separated in their respective functions; a priori they are not yet in contradiction to each other. Then the feelings of man are not the formless play of chance; nor are his thoughts an empty play of imagination, without any value. His feelings proceed from the law of necessity, his thoughts from reality. But when man enters the state of civilization, and art has fashioned him, this sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity, that is, as aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a fact in the former state, the harmony of feeling and thought, only exists in an ideal state. It is no longer in him, but out of him; it is a conception of thought which he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a fact, a reality of his life.

Art | Chance | Civilization | Contradiction | Feelings | Harmony | Imagination | Law | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Necessity | Play | Reality | Reason | Thought | Unity | Wisdom | Art | Thought |

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

I would be virtuous for my own sake, thought nobody were to know it; as I would be clean for my own sake, though nobody could see me.

Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Noah benShea

There is only work and love in life, thought Jacob. If we are fortunate, we love our work. If we are wise, we are willing to work at love.

Life | Life | Love | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Work | Thought |

Richard Savage

The only thought in the world that is worth anything is free thought. To free thought we owe all past progress and all hope for the future. Since when has any one made it appear that shackled thought could get on better than that which is free? Brains are a great misfortune if one is never to use them.

Better | Future | Hope | Misfortune | Past | Progress | Thought | Wisdom | World | Worth | Misfortune | Thought |

Albert Schweitzer

The abdication of thought has been the decisive factor in the collapse of civilization.

Civilization | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Ryushu Shutaku

Mind set free in the Dharma-realm, I sit at the moon-filled window Watching the mountains with my ears, Hearing the stream with open eyes. Each molecule preaches perfect law, Each moment chants true sutra: The most fleeting thought is timeless, A single hair's enough to stir the sea.

Enough | Law | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Charles Simmons

Meditation is the nurse of thought, and thought the food for meditation.

Meditation | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Albert Schweitzer

Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought - that is a real force.

Force | Thought | Wisdom | Work | Thought |