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

Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

Character | Future | Past | People | World |

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best explanations or apologies for wrong ones in the past; the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.

Character | Evidence | Future | Past | Receive | Regret | Right | World | Wrong |

John Dewey

We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

Character | Experience | Future | Meaning | Present | Time |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

The past is only memories; the future is but illusory hopes; focus on the present; for that is where your life really is; and it consists only of tests.

Character | Focus | Future | Life | Life | Past | Present |

Melvin James Evans

The great scientific discoveries of the past hundred years have been as child's play compared with the titanic forces that will be released when man applies himself to the understanding and mastery of his own nature.

Character | Man | Nature | Past | Play | Understanding | Will |

Henri Deterding, fully Henri Wilhelm August Deterding

The future belongs to those who are virile, to whom it is a pleasure to live, to create, to whet their intelligence on that of the others.

Character | Future | Intelligence | Pleasure |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Angels | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past |

Maria Edgeworth

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present; not only so, but, moreover, there is no moment at all, that is; no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards.

Character | Energy | Force | Future | Hope | Man | Present | Will |

John Dewey

To be being fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.

Character | Future | Present | Promise |

Tyron Edwards

Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Character | Error | Future | Past | Success | Wisdom | Learn |

Frederick Evan Crane

To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant.

Character | Devil | Future | Happy | Heart | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Work |

Horatio W. Dresser

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Better | Character | Conduct | Day | Future | Life | Life | Thinking | Wise | World |

E. Gordon Gee

Nothing is more important to our future than building community.

Character | Future | Important | Nothing |

Willard Gaylen

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential - generosity, service, self-sacrificed, unselfishness and duty.

Character | Duty | Emotions | Generosity | Guilt | Qualities | Self | Service | Shame | Society |

Benjamin Franklin

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.

Character | Fault | Present |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |