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

James M. Gillis

Art is revelation. If painting shows only what is there, it is not art. Art like fine music or high literature must carry the beholder beyond this world and all that appears in it, transport him to the shores of the eternal world and enable him to see and hear the things not given to the tongue of man to utter.

Art | Eternal | Literature | Man | Music | Revelation | World | Art |

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.

God | History | Life | Life | Man | Order | Past | Spirit | Words | God | Teacher |

Arabian Proverbs

The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers; Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Words |

African Proverbs

Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you.

Accomplishment | Better | World |

Ben Sira

He that controlleth this tongue liveth without strife.

Baltasar Gracián

The tongue is a wild beast; once let loose it is hard to chain.

Ben Sira

The stroke of a whip maketh a mark, but the stroke of a tongue breaketh bones.

Charles Caleb Colton

Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defensed of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those she had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.

Gold | Power | World | Worship |

Charles Caleb Colton

The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.

Calumny | God | Man |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

Immanuel Kant

No one, it is true, will be able to boast that he knows that he knows there is a God and a future life; for, it he knows this, he is just the man whom I have long wished to find... My conviction is not logical, but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say: It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but: I am morally certain, that is, my belief in God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter.

Belief | Future | God | Life | Life | Little | Man | Nature | Sentiment | Will | World | God |

John Ruskin

The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes speechless about it; all words are idle to him; all theories. Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way; without hesitation; without difficulty; without boasting.

Boasting | Difficulty | Good | Man | Need | Theories | Words | Work |

Joseph Addison

The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.

Good | Heart | Intelligence | Nature | Restraint |

Martin Buber

The soul must not boast that it is more holy than the body, for only in that it has climbed down into the body and works through its limbs can the soul attain to its perfection. The body on the other hand, may not brag of supporting the soul, for when the soul leaves, the flesh falls into decay.

Body | Perfection | Soul |