Great Throughts Treasury

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

Instruction

"Of this healing we, who are set over others, are the ministers and fellow-laborers; for whom it is a great thing to recognize and heal their own passions and sicknesses: or rather, not really a great thing, only the viciousness of most of those who belong to this order has made me say so: but a much greater thing is the power to heal and skillfully cleanse those of others, to the advantage both of those who are in want of healing and of those whose charge it is to heal." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"Why, then, have we been bamboozled into accepting the usual tale without questioning? I suspect two primary reasons: we love a sensible and satisfying story, and we are disinclined to challenge apparent authority (like textbooks!). But do remember that most satisfying tales are false." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Health is worth more than learning." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong." - Thomas Jefferson

"Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it as earned." - Thomas Jefferson

"That it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom" - Thomas Jefferson

"We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." - Thomas Jefferson

"Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home." - Tibetan Book of the Dead NULL

"When a player succeeds in forgetting himself and really acts out his assumed role, remarkable changes in his game often takes place." - Tim Gallwey, fully W. Timothy Gallwey

"Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

"When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself--nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

"All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Consequently, since this study is vast in extent, embellished and enriched as it is with many different kinds of learning, I think that men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"Originality is nothing by judicious imitation (plagiarism). The most original writers borrowed one from another." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Appreciation, whether of nature, or books, or art, or men, depends very much on temperament. - What is beauty or genius or greatness to one, is far from being so to another." - Tryon Edwards

"Emotion which does not lepd to and flow out in right action is not only useless, but it weakens character, and be­comes an excuse for neglect of effort." - Tryon Edwards

"A scholar should gather up spirit and energy in single-mindedness. If your quest for virtue is for reasons of fame and fortune, you will never amount to anything. If in scholarly endeavors you indulge in fashionable verse and stylistic flourishes, you cannot attain depth and stability of mind." - Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming

"Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the laws and the prophets." - Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL

"One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'" - Elizabeth Lesser

"Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers." - Eudora Welty

"Theology is about God, and God is Spirit … we have accumulated a lot of experience in the Christian community of persons treating theology as a subject in which God is studied in the ways we are taught to study in our schools—acquiring information that we can use, or satisfying our curiosity, or obtaining qualifications for a job or profession. There are, in fact, a lot of people within and outside formal religious settings who talk and write a lot about spirituality, things of the spirit or the soul or higher things, but are not interested in God. There is a wonderful line in T. H. White’s novel of King Arthur (The Once and Future King), in which Guinevere in her old age becomes the abbess of a convent: ‘she was a wonderful theologian but she wasn’t interested in God.’ It happens." - Eugene Peterson