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

Herman E. Daly

At the present time, global interdependence is celebrated as a self-evident good. The royal road to development, peace, and harmony is thought to be the unrelenting conquest of each nation's market by all other nations.

Conquest | Global | Good | Harmony | Nations | Peace | Present | Self | Thought | Time | Thought |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Reason provides a means of escaping from the constraints of belief-systems backed by authority and from the resentment which clever people feel at the power of their own passions. Because reason--in admittedly varying degrees--is available to everybody, it has a potential advantage over the truth you feel and the truth you are told.

Authority | Belief | Means | People | Power | Reason | Resentment | Truth |

Kālidāsa NULL

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Action | Beauty | Dawn | Day | Existence | Glory | Growth | Hope | Life | Life | Tomorrow | Vision |

Aeschylus NULL

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.

Fear | Good | Heart | Pain | Wisdom |

Adam Smith

The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician... The inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency.

Education | Genius | Inequality | Knowledge | Law | Public | Reward | Study | Time | Teacher |

Alan Cohen

All acts of charity or giving are valuable only inasmuch as they recognize the true dignity of those toward whom the contribution is directed. Any money or time given to another without recognizing their full equality, is as chaff in the wind, and serves only the mockery of the ego. Pity or sorrow is never a worthy reason for charity, for it only reinforces the bondage of the giver and the recipient. Real charity is never a giving, but always a sharing. He who gives as a giver remains half; he who shares, knows wholeness.

Charity | Dignity | Ego | Equality | Giving | Mockery | Money | Pity | Reason | Sorrow | Time | Wholeness |

Alexis Carrel

In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable. The existence of thought is as fundamental as for instance, the physiochemical equilibria of blood serum. The sepration of eh qualitative from the quantitative grew still wider when Descartes created the dualism of the body and soul. Then, the manifestations of the mind became inexplicable. The material was definitely isolated from the spiritual. Organic structures and physiological mechanisms assumed a far greater reality than thought, pleasure, sorrow and beauty. This error switched civilization to the road which led science to triumph and man to degradation.

Beauty | Body | Civilization | Error | Existence | Important | Man | Mind | Organic | Pleasure | Reality | Science | Sorrow | Soul | Thought | Thought |

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.

Money |

Author Unknown NULL

All glory comes from daring to begin.

Daring | Glory |

Arthur Schopenhauer

Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind but affections of the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of memory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which I mean we cannot renew them. We can recall only the ideas that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things we were led to say; and these form a gauge of our feelings at the time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference to us as soon as they are over.

Feelings | Ideas | Indifference | Joy | Memory | Mind | Sorrow | Time | Will |

Ben Jonson

When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.

Glory | Grief | Man | Posterity |

Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

Your sorrow is for nothing. The truly wise mourn neither for the living nor for the dead. There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be... That Reality which pervades the universe is indestructible. No one has power to change the Changeless... Death is certain for the born. Rebirth is certain for the dead. You should not grieve for what is unavoidable.

Change | Death | Future | Mourn | Nothing | Power | Reality | Sorrow | Time | Universe | Wise |