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

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 |

Yechiel Michel Tukatinsky

The physical loss is not sufficient for mourning. Purely on a physical level what would a person gain if he lived many more years? What is the ultimate gain in devouring hundreds more chickens and thousands more loaves of bread? What is the overall difference if the deceased left all this to others? The Torah obligates us to mourn to emphasize the loss of the true value of life; which is the spiritual elevation a person could have gained if he were still alive. The Almighty placed him on this earth for this purpose. The person’s death should remind the mourners to fill their lives with the spiritual growth that they are capable of.

Character | Death | Earth | Growth | Life | Life | Mourn | Mourning | Purpose | Purpose | Loss | Torah | Value |

Charles Yriarte

The foolish and vulgar are always accustomed to value equally the good and the bad.

Character | Good | Value |

W. W. Battershall

What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms.

Awe | Death | Earth | Eternal | God | History | Life | Life | Power | Silence | Sorrow | Wisdom | God |

Gamaliel Bailey

Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.

Men | Philanthropy | Respect | Riches | Wisdom | Respect | Value |

John Barth, fully John Simmons Barth

Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

Nothing | People | Wisdom | Value |

Kenneth Eldon Bailey

Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we don't value the sun for its height.

Men | Philanthropy | Respect | Riches | Wisdom | Respect | Value |

John Christian Bovee

What man knows should find expression in what he does. The chief value of superior knowledge is that it leads to a performing manhood.

Knowledge | Man | Wisdom | Value |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess.

Contrast | Credit | Man | Silence | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | World | Worth | Value |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sights are the signs of its greatest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

Joy | Love | Reason | Silence | Tenderness | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.

Envy | Love | Man | Reason | Self | Self-love | Silence | Wisdom |

Samuel Butler

Praise, like gold and diamond,s owes its value only to its scarcity.

Gold | Praise | Wisdom | Value |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.

Life | Life | Man | Waste | Wisdom | Value |

William Congreve

Even silence may be eloquent in love.

Love | Silence | Wisdom |

Martinus Dumiensis

If you yourself cannot keep silent, how can you expect silence from another?

Silence | Wisdom |

Fitzhugh Dodson

Some people, in working toward a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to reexamine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with a more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it.

Action | Important | People | Sense | Time | Wisdom | Inertia | Value |

Tyron Edwards

The benefit of proverbs, or maxims, is that they separate those who act on principle from those who act on impulse; and they lead to promptness and decision in acting. Their value deepens on four things; do they embody correct principles; are they on important subjects; what is the extent, and what is the ease of their application?

Decision | Important | Impulse | Maxims | Principles | Promptness | Proverbs | Wisdom | Value |