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

Joseph Anderson, fully Joseph Inslee Anderson

There is nothing that solidifies and strengthens a nation like reading of the nation’s own history, whether that history is recorded in books, or embodied in customs, institutions, and monuments.

Books | History | Nothing | Reading | Wisdom |

William L. Abbott

Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.

Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Bruno Bettelheim

Reading and what it can contribute to one's life is not something that pertains only to the ego and its conscious mind; it is also deeply rooted in the unconsciousness. Those who retain all through life a deep commitment to the literary harbor in their consciousness some residue of their earlier conviction that reading is an art permitting access to magic worlds, although very few of them are aware that they subconsciously believe this to be so.

Art | Commitment | Consciousness | Ego | Life | Life | Magic | Mind | Reading | Unconsciousness | Wisdom | Art |

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 |

Joe Bayly, fully Joseph Tate Bayly

In an age of the inconsequential and frivolous, reading fills our minds with the consequential. Reading involves stewardship of a mind, that was created in the divine image, to think great thoughts as well as to notice the small sparrow. Reading stretches the mind.

Age | Mind | Reading | Stewardship | Wisdom | Think |

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 |

John Christian Bovee

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Children | Kindness | Life | Life | Praise | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Children | Kindness | Life | Life | Praise | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Contempt | Good | Little | Man | Praise | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

They who have read about everything are thought to understand everything, but it is not always so; reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections - we must chew them over again.

Enough | Knowledge | Mind | Reading | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Thought | Understand |

Natalie Cole

Just as we can dig a channel to control the direction of a stream, we can control the direction of our children's activities through praise and recognition.

Children | Control | Praise | Wisdom |

George Dawson

Half the gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly worth reading are read.

Books | Reading | Society | Wisdom | Worth | Society | Gossip |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

He whose ruling passion is the love of praise is a slave to everyone who has a tongue for flattery and calumny.

Calumny | Flattery | Love | Passion | Praise | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Censure | Falsehood | Praise | Self | Self-praise | Superiority | Wisdom |

Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.

Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |

Jascha Heifetz

Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.

Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |