Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Discipline

"One who handles honey, licks his fingers. (Meaning: Somebody in charge of handling money or resources, get to keep or enjoy some benefits for himself.)" - Turkish Proverbs

"“To believe your own thought,” observed Emerson, “to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.” But to impose what you believe is true for you upon all men, indeed upon a single individual – that is despotism." - Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

"The elevated sentiments and high examples which poetry, eloquence, and history are often bringing under our view naturally tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, the love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and the admiration of what is truly illustrious and great." - Hugh Blair

"So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top." - William James

"Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting." - William James

"Voluntary action is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions." - William James

"Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul." - Emile Zola

"The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones." - Emile Zola

"A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"I always like the bad ones. I know he's a bad one of some sort." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry, and technology, has no discernible limit must necessary run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth – in short, materialism – does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"The emotion you feel is always about the vibrational variance between where you want to be and where you are. If you're out of balance, there are only two ways to bring yourself into alignment - either raise your expectation to match your desire, or lower your desire to match your expectation." - Ester and Jerry Hicks

"Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?...I will do my best with what is here." - Eugene Peterson