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

Jacques Maritain

The sole philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of truth is absolute silence - even mental.

Absolute | Character | Doubt | Philosophy | Silence | Truth |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after life.

Cause | Character | Doubt | Harmony | Immortality | Life | Life | Oppression | Order | Soul | World |

Charles Reade

Judicious absence is a weapon.

Absence | Character |

Lord Samuel, Herbert Louis Samuel, First Viscount Samuel

Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.

Character | Doubt | Morality | Myth |

Francis Bowes Sayre

Religion isn’t yours firsthand until you doubt it right down to the ground.

Character | Doubt | Religion | Right |

Noah benShea

Strength is not the absence of weaknesses but how we wrestle with our weaknesses.

Absence | Character | Strength |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.

Absence | Character | Courage | Fear |

Leonard M. Zunin

I believe that courage is all too often mistakenly seen as the absence of fear... Courage is seeing your fear, in a realistic perspective, defining it, considering alternatives and choosing to function in spite of risks.

Absence | Character | Courage | Fear |

Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"

For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience; since many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful nor follow what is good. For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reasoning that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied thereby, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But when he has had actual experience of combustion his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore reasoning does not suffice, but experience does.

Doubt | Experience | Intuition | Knowledge | Light | Man | Mind | Neglect | Rest | Wisdom |

Joseph L. Baron

The dynamite of doubt is useful in wrecking old structures; but to build new buildings, we must have the dynamics of faith.

Doubt | Faith | Wisdom | Old |

Kenneth Eldon Bailey

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Doubt | Truth | Wisdom |

Guiraut de Borneilh

Love is perfect kindness, which is born - there is no doubt - from the heart and eyes. The eyes make it blossom; the heart matures it.

Doubt | Heart | Kindness | Love | Wisdom |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends.

Absence | Better | Heart | People | Wisdom | Think |