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

Frank Plumpton Ramsey

Theology and Absolute Ethics are two famous subjects which we have realized to have no real objects.

Absolute | Character | Ethics | Famous | Theology |

George Matthew Adams

There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause.

Applause | Care | Famous | Man | Wisdom | Woman |

Christian Nestell Bovee

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die. The grass is already growing over him.

Famous | Will | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

One who is contented with what he has done will never become famous for what he will do. He has lain down to die, and the grass is already growing over him.

Famous | Will | Wisdom |

John Florio

He is a valiaunt victor, a famous Conquerour, and a mighty prince, that can vanquishe himselfe.

Famous | Wisdom |

Cullen Hightower

People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they've done.

Famous | People |

Isadora Duncan

No woman has ever told the truth of her life. The autobiographies of most famous women are a series of accounts of the outward existence, of petty details and anecdotes which give no realization of their real life. For the great moments of joy or agony they remain strangely silent.

Agony | Existence | Famous | Joy | Life | Life | Truth | Woman |

Jewish Proverbs

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something, we are no longer free.

Famous | People |

James Hamilton

Sweetness of spirit and sunshine is famous for dispelling fears and difficulties; patience is a mighty help to the burden-bearer.

Famous | Patience | Spirit |

John Milton

Enflamed with the study of learning, and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with the high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

Admiration | Famous | God | Learning | Men | Study | Virtue | Virtue |

Joseph Addison

Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.

Acquaintance | Admiration | Famous | Man |

Norman Cousins

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

Beauty | Birth | Education | Famous | History | Ideas | Imagination | Little | Magic | Regard | Unique | Wonder |

W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

Famous | Men | Friends |

Ervin László

If the substance of the spiritual experience is always and everywhere the same, differences in its expression and interpretation are secondary and not a valid cause for conflict and intolerance. The world to which our quantum brain connects us is fundamentally one, whether its oneness is due to an information field within the natural world or the work of a divine transcendent intelligence. To enter into communion with this oneness has been the quest of all the great teachers and spiritual masters. And to understand the nature of this oneness has been, and is, the ultimate quest of all great scientists. Still today, physicists seek the one equation that would anchor their famous "Theory of Everything," the theory that would account for all the laws of nature and explain everything that ever happened in our integrally whole universe. Einstein said that knowing this equation would be reading the mind of God.

Cause | Experience | Famous | Knowing | Mind | Nature | Oneness | Reading | Work | World | Understand |

Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith

As the twentieth century began, science equaled a materialistic worldview. As the twenty-first century began, the worldview of science, at least of physics and astronomy, may have traded place with that of religion. Consider Einstein's famous equation E = mc2. Nothing of matter dies but continues on in another form, elsewhere. The church divines and theologians for two thousand years have devised arguments and "proofs" of immortality but nothing equal to this.

Church | Famous | Immortality | Nothing | Science |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

Famous |

José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez

Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.

Action | Dignity | Famous |

Joseph Wood Krutch

The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.

Balance | Famous | Nature |

Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

Achievement | Age | Evolution | Famous | Improvement | Influence | Land | Need | People | Progress | Regard | Weapons |

Maureen Dowd, fully Maureen Bridgid Dowd

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.

Authority | Democracy | Famous | Giving |