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

Ralph Waldo Trine

There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest wisdom within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.

Character | Man | Power | Soul | Wisdom | World |

Yitzchok Waldshein

When do we get angry at another person? When he does something against our wishes. Therefore if you give up your demands that others should behave towards you in a certain way, you will not get angry.

Character | Will | Wishes |

Francis Wayland

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness.

Character | Dignity | Love | Soul | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Intellect | Thought |

John Greenleaf Whittier

Search thine own heart. What paineth thee in others in thyself may be.

Character | Heart | Search |

Babylonian Talmud

Whose works exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; whose wisdom exceeds his works, his wisdom shall perish.

Wisdom |

Hermalaus Barbarus, also Ermalao or Hermalao Barbaro

Fortunately wise is he who gains wisdom from another's mishap.

Wisdom | Wise |

J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

Wisdom |

Bruno Bettelheim

Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen passively most of the day to the warm verbal communication coming from the TV screen, to the deep emotional appeal of the so-called TV personality, are often unable to respond to real persons because they arouse so much less feeling than the skilled actor. Worse, they lose the ability to learn from reality because life experiences are more complicated than the ones they see on the screen, and there is no one who comes in at the end to explain it all. The “TV child”... gets discouraged when he cannot grasp the meaning of what happens to him.... If, later in life, this block of solid inertia is not removed, the emotional isolation from others that starts in front of TV may continue... This being seduced into passivity and discouraged about facing life actively on one’ sown is the real danger of TV.

Ability | Children | Danger | Day | Isolation | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Reality | Wisdom | Danger | Inertia | Learn |

J. Beaumont

Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression.

Age | Childhood | Courage | Extreme | Ignorance | Man | Men | Nothing | Old age | Oppression | Will | Wisdom | Old |

Elazar ben Azariah, alt. spelling Eleazar

Some of a man's praise may be sung in his presence, all of it in his absence.

Absence | Man | Praise | Wisdom |

Anne Baxter

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.

Devil | Duty | Idleness | Labor | Sin | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |

William Blake

To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.

Joy | Man | Money | Tears | Wisdom |

Babylonian Talmud

When a man gives vent to his wrath his wisdom leaves him.

Man | Wisdom |

L. S. Barksdale

Praise is especially destructive to children, for they readily grasp the fact that praise is based on identification with their actions. Thus, they automatically blame themselves every time they make a mistake. This is the beginning of their lack of Self-Esteem.

Beginning | Blame | Children | Esteem | Mistake | Praise | Self | Self-esteem | Time | Wisdom |

William Blake

To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.

People | Tears | Wisdom |

Francis Lyall "Frank" Birch

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Eternal | Price | Thought | Wisdom |