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

Hugh Walpole, fully Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to life in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not over anxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibility; that gives you tranquillity without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.

Capacity | Character | Complacency | Consciousness | Earth | Life | Life | Materialism | Tranquility | World | Happiness |

Carl Maria von Weber, fully Carl Maria Fredrich Ernst von Weber

Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the measure by which to try us; and the fearful power of habit, after a time, suffers not the best will to ripen into action.

Action | Character | Existence | Habit | Important | Power | Time | Trifles | Will |

Akon NULL

Mankind is a creature of space, a space race living on a planet in orbit around a star, as others are also doing. Mankind is not unique, as he fondly imagines. He is merely a part of the vast interstellar human family bred and nurtured by us through the eons of time on planets in different solar systems throughout the galaxy.

Family | Mankind | Race | Space | Time | Unique | Wisdom |

Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf

Most forms of human creativity have one aspect n common: the attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions, experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some meaning and value to our existence... The crisis of our time in the Western world is that the search for meaning has become meaningless for many of us.

Character | Creativity | Emotions | Existence | Meaning | Search | Sense | Time | World | Crisis | Value |

David Malet Armstrong, aka D. M. Armstrong

One of the great problems that must be solved in any attempt to work out a scientific world-view is that of bringing the being who puts forward the world-view within the world-view. By treating man, including his mental processes, as a purely, as a purely physical object, operating according to exactly the same laws as all other physical things, this object is achieved with the greatest possible intellectual economy. The knower differs from the world he knows only in the greater complexity of his physical organization.

Man | Object | Organization | Problems | Wisdom | Work | World |

Henry Major Tomlinson

The world is what we think it is. If we can change our thoughts, we can change the world. And that is our hope.

Change | Character | Hope | Wisdom | World | Think |

Chayim Efrayim Zaichyk

One of the prime causes of unhappiness in the world is approval-seeking.

Character | Unhappiness | World |

Ashtavakra NULL

The phenomenal world is like an empty jar (enclosing Space, which nevertheless is boundless). Thus known, phenomenality need be neither renounced, accepted, nor destroyed.

Need | Space | Wisdom | World |

Ralph Waldo Trine

There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest wisdom within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.

Character | Man | Power | Soul | Wisdom | World |

Daniel Webster

Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce in a country like ours, general prosperity, content and cheerfulness.

Character | Cheerfulness | Health | Labor | Prosperity |

David Abram

Perception... is a constant communion between ourselves and the living world that encompasses us.

Perception | Wisdom | World |

Edwin Percy Whipple

The saddest failures in life are those that come from the not putting forth of power and will to succeed.

Character | Life | Life | Power | Will |

Vittorio Alfieri

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.

Elegance | Language | Power | Prudence | Prudence | Simplicity | Wisdom |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

When one has this intelligent self-love is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall do all in his power to commend to him the love of God? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this right piety, this the service due to God only.

God | Love | Piety | Power | Religion | Right | Self | Self-love | Service | Wisdom | Worship | God |

Honoré de Balzac

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Patience | Power | Time | Wisdom |

J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet

What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will.

Genius | Power | Will | Wisdom |