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

Israel Knox

Education is not a process that continues for some years and then ends. Education has only one sovereign purpose: to prepare one for more education. All else is subsidiary to this. Education should create hungers - spiritual, moral, and aesthetic hungers for value... The gift of education will be a heart that is whole.

Aesthetic | Character | Education | Ends | Heart | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Each heart is a world. You find all within yourself that you find without. To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.

Character | Heart | World |

Watterson Lowe

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-interest, fear, despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Character | Despair | Doubt | Enthusiasm | Fear | Ideals | People | Self | Self-interest | Soul | Spirit | Worry | Old |

Albertus Magnus, known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne

Happy is the man who, by continually effacing all images and through introversion and the lifting up of his mind to God, at last forgets and leaves behind all such hindrances... If, therefore, thou desirest a safe stair and short path to arrive at the end of true bliss, then, with an intent mind, earnestly desire and aspire after continual cleanness of heart and purity of mind. Add to this a constant calm and tranquillity of the senses, and a recollecting of the affections of the heart, continually fixing them above. Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms... Thus continue, until thou becomest immutable and dost arrive at any vicissitude of space or time, reposing in that inward quiet and secret mansion of the deity.

Character | Desire | God | Happy | Heart | Man | Mind | Peace | Purity | Quiet | Safe | Space | Time | Tranquility | Work |

Morris Lichtenstein

The Divine Mind communicates with the human mind through the imagination. A prayer, therefore, should be offered in the form of a mental image. Man must visualize the thing he desires, he must use his imaginative powers to form his petition in terms clearly outlined in his own mind. The profound concentration of attention and thought which this form of prayer requires fills also the heart with deep earnestness and devotion. Man must pray whole-heartedly as well as wholemindedly; he must believe in his heart that his well-being depends completely upon his prayer.

Attention | Character | Devotion | Earnestness | Heart | Imagination | Man | Mind | Prayer | Thought | Thought |

Abraham Lincoln

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.

Character | Heart | Right | Wisdom |

Walter Savage Landor

There is no outward sign of politeness which has not a deep, moral reason. Behavior is a mirror in which every one shows his own image. There is a politeness of the heart akin to love, from which springs the easiest politeness of outward behavior... Politeness is not always a sign of wisdom, but the want of it always leaves room for the suspicion of folly.

Behavior | Character | Folly | Heart | Love | Reason | Suspicion | Wisdom | Politeness |

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre

Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through is history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters - roles into which we have been drafted - and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are a part to be construed... Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious strutters in their actions as in their words. Hence there is no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resource. Mythology, in its original sense, is at the heart of things. Vico was right and so was Joyce. And so too of course is that moral tradition fro heroic society to its medieval heirs according to which the telling of stories has a key part in educating us into the virtues.

Character | Children | Heart | History | Man | Men | Order | Practice | Question | Right | Sense | Society | Story | Tradition | Truth | Understanding | Words | Society | Learn | Understand |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others.

Character | Courage | Enough | God | Happy | Heart | Simplicity | Strength | God | Happiness |

Christoph Ernst Luthardt

It is the inclination and tendency of the heart which finally determines the opinions of the mind.

Character | Heart | Inclination | Mind |

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Age, when it does not harden the heart and sour the temper, naturally returns to the milky disposition of infancy. Time as the same effect upon the mind as on the face. The predominant passion, the strongest feature, becomes more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Age | Character | Heart | Infancy | Mind | Passion | Temper | Time |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

Art | Character | Dreams | Art | Understand |

Thomas Middleton

Charity is never lost: it may meet with ingratitude, or be of no service to those on whom it was bestowed, yet it ever does a work of beauty and grace upon the heart of the giver.

Beauty | Character | Charity | Grace | Heart | Ingratitude | Service | Wisdom | Work | Beauty |

Madame de Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville

Laughter, indeed, is God’s therapy... in order that we might understand that at the heart of our mortal existence there lies a mystery, at once unutterably beautiful and hilariously funny.

Character | Existence | God | Heart | Laughter | Mortal | Mystery | Order | Understand |

George S. Merriam

The passion for truth has underlying it a profound conviction that what is real is best; that when we get to the heart of things we shall find there what we most need.

Character | Heart | Need | Passion | Truth |

George William McDonald

Instead of a gem or a flower, cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend.

Character | Friend | Heart | Thought | Thought |

Mishnah or The Mishnah NULL

It is the same whether a man offers much or little, provided his heart is directed to Heaven.

Character | Heart | Heaven | Little | Man |

Thomas Merton

Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

Character | Heart | Love | Prayer | Wisdom |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.

Character | Heart | Injustice | Injustice | Integrity | Patience | Purpose | Purpose |