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

Phillips Brooks

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is

Action | Desire | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Reality | Spirit | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |

George B. Cortelyou, fully George Bruce Cortelyou

The greatest asset of any nation is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit - the will to win and the courage to work.

Courage | Danger | People | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work | Danger |

Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

Conversation by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual illumination of the soul. God’s grace lights up the dark heart.

Conversation | God | Grace | Heart | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |

Jeremy Collier

Despair is the offspring of fear; of laziness, and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and often of honesty too. I would not despair unless I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate; and signed and sealed by necessity.

Despair | Fate | Fear | Honesty | Impatience | Laziness | Misfortune | Necessity | Resolution | Spirit | Wisdom | Misfortune |

Bartley Crum, fully Bartley Cavanaugh Crum

I believe, with all my heart, that the Spirit of God is within every man, however mean, ugly, or diseased; and that when we visit indignities upon other men, we are affronting our Creator, and we are also harming ourselves.

God | Heart | Man | Men | Spirit | Ugly | Wisdom | God |

William Cowper

I must think forever: would an eternal train of my usual thoughts be either worthy of me or useful to me? I must feel forever: would an eternal reign of my present spirit and desires please or satisfy me? I must act forever: would an eternal course of my habitual conduct bring happiness, or even bear reflection?... Habits are soon assumed; but when we endeavor to strip them off, it is being flayed alive.

Conduct | Eternal | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Wisdom | Think |

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

Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. Do everything with excitement, by the spirit of grace.

Excitement | Grace | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Wisdom | Work |

John Fischer

The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different - to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.

Body | Chance | Effort | Mind | Opportunity | Spirit | Unique | Wisdom | Child |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached.

Man | Past | Self | Spirit | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Thought |

Benjamin Franklin

Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.

Man | Poverty | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new.

Day | Good | Little | Men | People | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom | Words |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words; the spirit in which we act is the great matter.

Good | Spirit | Wisdom | Words |

Edward Hill

To empty one's mind of all thoughts and refill the void with a spirit greater than oneself is to expand the mind into a realm not accessible by conventional processes of reason.

Mind | Reason | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes - the vulgar. The high point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dispense with the eternal necessity of never being twice the same.

Abstract | Beauty | Elegance | Eternal | Necessity | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The body oppressed by excess bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with.

Body | Earth | Excess | Mind | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit also we may breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it.

Aspiration | Spirit | Wisdom | Aspiration |