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

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.

Experience | Meditation | Mind | Nothing | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"It is destiny" - Phrase of the weak human heart! "It is destiny" - dark apology for every error! The strong and virtuous admit no destiny.

Apology | Destiny | Error | Heart | Wisdom |

Chester Bliss Bowles

The chief characteristics of the (liberal) attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith.

Change | Faith | Reason | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

Benevolence | Fraud | Good | Knowledge | Little | Mankind | Wisdom | World | Friendship | Forgive | Learn |

Louis Bromfield

As soils are depleted, human health, vitality and intelligence to go with them.

Health | Intelligence | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

There is not so agonizing a feeling in the whole catalogue of human suffering, as the first conviction that the heart of the being whom we most tenderly love is estranged from us.

Heart | Love | Suffering | Wisdom |

Elihu Burritt

No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness.

Wisdom | World |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Earth | Heaven | Life | Life | Object | Play | Wisdom |

Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

Employment, which Galen calls, "Nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery.

Indolence | Mother | Nature | Wisdom | Happiness |

William R. Catton, Jr.

Viewed ecologically, the human saga is a tragic success story.

Story | Success | Wisdom |

Harry Woodburn Chase

Man's knowledge of science has clearly outstripped his knowledge of man. Our only hope of making the atom servant rather than master lies in education, in a broad liberal education where each student within his capacity can free himself from trammels of dogmatic prejudice and apply his educational accouterment to besetting social and human problems.

Capacity | Education | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Prejudice | Problems | Science | Wisdom |

Marc Chagall, born Moishe Shagal

The artist must penetrate into the world, feel the fate of human beings, of peoples, with real love. There is not art for art's sake. One must be interested in the entire realm of life.

Art | Fate | Life | Life | Love | Wisdom | World | Fate | Art |

William Ellery Channing

War is the concentration of all human crimes. It turns man into a beast of prey.

Man | War | Wisdom |

Jacob Burnap

Decision of character is one of the most important of human qualities, philosophically considered. Speculation, knowledge, is not the chief end of man; it is action.

Action | Character | Decision | Important | Knowledge | Man | Qualities | Speculation | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.

Evil | Fraud | Little | Lust | Man | Perfidy | Rage | War | Wisdom |