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

Henry Ward Beecher

Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is last year's nest, from which the bird has flown.

Men | Promise | Success |

Jan Phillips

Committing to our creativity is an act of faith, a promise that we will keep at it despite our fears and failings and despite whatever obstacles we find in our paths.

Creativity | Faith | Promise | Will |

John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner

If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.

Present | Promise | Society | Society |

Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz

Don’t ever promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise.

Promise |

Lewis H. Lapham

To a thong of aging infants, the consumer society holds out the promise of eternal youth, of an enchanted mirror in which the customer can see himself reflected in the transfiguring light of immortality.

Eternal | Immortality | Light | Promise | Society | Youth | Society |

Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

Man should remember that God speaks the truth and promises by Himself, the Truth. If God were to be false to His word, His Truth, He would be false to His Divinity, and then He would not be God. It is his promise that our pains shall be changed to joy.

Divinity | God | Joy | Man | Promise | Truth | God |

Martin Luther

The Church owes its life to the word of promise through faith, and is nourished and preserved by this same word.

Church | Faith | Life | Life | Promise |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

Abstract | Beauty | Future | Past | Promise | Wisdom | Beauty |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

There is no stronger force that you can employ against temptation than wisdom. Complete understanding will bring you to the point where nothing can tempt you to actions that promise pleasure but in the end will only hurt you.

Force | Nothing | Pleasure | Promise | Temptation | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | Temptation |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

It is not strange at all that the spread of divorce in a society is accompanied by a diminishing of public morality in all sectors… True love does not exist if it is not faithful. And it cannot exist if it is not honest. Neither can it be in the concrete vocation of matrimony if there is no full promise that lasts until death. Only indissoluble matrimony will be firm and lasting support for the familial community.

Death | Love | Matrimony | Morality | Promise | Public | Society | Will | Society |

Talmud or The Talmud NULL

One should not promise a child something and then not give it as he thus teaches the child to lie.

Promise | Child |

William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward

We always expect love to be healing and whole, and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures... Our love and our high expectations that it will somehow make life complete seem to be an integral part of the experience. Love seems to promise that life's gaping wounds will close up and heal. It makes little difference that in the past love has shown itself to be painful and disturbing. There is something self-renewing in love.

Experience | Life | Life | Little | Love | Past | Promise | Self | Will |

Thomas Moore

We are drawn into intimacy by possibilities rather than by realities, by the promise of things to come rather than by proven accomplishments, and perhaps by seductions that are darker than the bright reasons to which we admit.

Promise |

George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair

History consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters.

Promise |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

Promise |

James Allen

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

Day | Promise | Prophecy | Vision |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.

Occupation | Policy | Power | Promise | Public | War | Will |

Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL

There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards.

Man | Nothing | Promise | Will |