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

John Locke

It is an established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, stamped, as it were, upon the mind of man which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only show how many men obtain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any such innate impressions... Let us suppose the mind to be a blank tablet; how comes it to be furnished? To this answer in one word, from experience.

Experience | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Opinion | Principles | Soul | Understanding | Wisdom | World |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

Wisdom |

John Neal

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.

Better | Man | Opposition | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

If we start with the visible, then in order to explain it we must pass into its parts. If we seek to explain man by his organs, his organs by the cells composing them, the atoms by electrons, we lose sight of the man as a whole. Under the microscope the man himself completely disappears... The idea behind organised matter is overlooked. That which is manifest in time and space engages its attention, and so it cannot help looking for causal origin in the smaller constituent parts of any organism - and also in preceding time, i.e. in the past.

Attention | Man | Order | Past | Space | Time | Wisdom |

Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

I learned that no man in God’s wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man.

Earth | God | Man | Wisdom |

Kathleen Norris

There is a divinity that shapes our ends - but we can help by listening for Its voice.

Divinity | Ends | Listening | Wisdom |

Theodore Parker

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading. But a great book that comes from a great thinker - it is a ship of thought, deep-freighted with truth and with beauty.

Beauty | Books | Learning | Reading | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Think |

Joseph Parker

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker - it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty.

Beauty | Books | Learning | Reading | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Think |

Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

Can a man control his future? Yes. Despite the system they live under, men everywhere have, I believe, more power over the future than ever before. The important thing is that we must choose to exercise it. What we do today determines how the world shall go, for tomorrow is made up of the sum total of today's experiences... Far from feeling hopeless or helpless, we must seize every opportunity, however small, to help the world around us toward peace, productivity and human brotherhood.

Brotherhood | Control | Future | Important | Man | Men | Opportunity | Peace | Power | System | Tomorrow | Wisdom | World |

William Penn

Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other... O God, help us not to despise or oppose what we do not understand.

Despise | God | Inquiry | Obedience | Truth | Wisdom |

Henry Habberley "H.H." Price

Where we consider the world around us, we cannot help noticing that there is a great deal of recurrence or repetition in it. The same colour recurs over and over again in ever so many things. Shapes repeat themselves likewise.

Wisdom | World |

Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol

The methods that help a man acquire a fortune are the very ones that keep him from enjoying it.

Fortune | Man | Wisdom |

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

Even in a righteous cause force is a fearful thing; God only helps when men can help no more.

Cause | Force | God | Men | Wisdom | God |

Alan B. Siegel

When you remember your dreams, you remember your Self, your hidden wounds, fears, desires and joys... When you explore you dreams, you begin to make yourself whole: you take back the powerful feelings of grief, rage, and love that you've denied or avoided. When you share your dreams, you are sharing deeply personal feelings that create bonds of intimacy and help you receive the love and support needed to heal and grow at times of change.

Change | Dreams | Feelings | Grief | Love | Rage | Receive | Self | Wisdom |

Charles Simmons

Never live in hope or expectation, while your arms are folded. God helps those that help themselves. Providence smiles on those who put their shoulders to the wheel that propels to wealth and happiness.

Expectation | God | Hope | Providence | Wealth | Wisdom | God |

Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe

If the body is only the vehicle by which the soul can access the experience of physical living, then there is no real physical me. The soul (or life force) is the only real me. If you and I (the souls) want to achieve the most from this earthly lifetime, the more varied the experiences we should seek. That said, it’s too easy for you and me to fall into a comfort zone and try to avoid change. To keep this from happening, the experiences change rapidly as a result of the body moving from infancy though old age. The physical changes help to enhance our learning curve, our ability to serve, and our chance to evolve.

Ability | Age | Body | Chance | Change | Comfort | Experience | Force | Infancy | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | Soul | Wisdom | Old |

Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe

In order to remain self-sufficient and calm during chaos, one must have a holistic perspective--a master plan with which help you cope. Those who are flexible and have prepared themselves will find that the accelerated changes to come will provide a profound opening of consciousness to minimize the stresses and discomforts of the journey.

Consciousness | Journey | Order | Plan | Self | Will | Wisdom |

Edward Stillingfleet

Sincerity and honesty carry one through many difficulties which all the arts he can invent would never help him through.

Honesty | Sincerity | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.

Life | Life | Little | Passion | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wisdom |