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 Hugo

As there is always more misery at the lower end than humanity at the top, everything was given away before it was received, like water on parched soil.

Age | Calmness | Enough | Glory | Man | Past | Will | Old |

Victor Hugo

On earth the divine must be human.

Age |

Victor Hugo

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

Age | Antiquity | Criticism | Flattery | History | Justice | Knowledge | Men | Metaphysics | Modesty | Old age | Philosophy | Poetry | Public | Religion | Old |

Victor Hugo

Monarchy is the foreigner; oppression is the foreigner; divine right is the foreigner.

Age | God | God |

Victor Hugo

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

Age | Art | Man | Spirit | Art |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Behold and Acknowledge the Glory that you have witnessed; proclaim the joy that you have experienced; confer the Grace that you have earned.

Age | Enjoyment | Old age | Pity | Sound | Old |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Talkative persons easily step into scandal mongering. Too much talk and a tongue addicted to scandal are twins; they work together and in unison.

Age | Immortality | Life | Life | Old age | Old |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Age | Change | Rest | Risk | Safe | Virtue | Virtue | Think |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

Age | Old age | Waiting | Old |

Václav Havel

An ordinary human being, with a personal conscience, personally answering for something to somebody and personally and directly taking responsibility, seems to be receding farther and farther from the realm of politics. Politicians seem to turn into puppets that only look human and move in a giant, rather inhuman theatre; they appear to become merely cogs in a huge machine, objects of a major civilizational automatism which has gotten out of control and for which nobody is responsible.

Age | Civilization |

Valmiki NULL

One’s elder brother, father and the teacher who gives knowledge - all these three, treading the path of dharma, are to be considered as one’s father.

Age | Right | Wrong | Parent |

Vannevar Bush

Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by the keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable.

Age | World |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

There's nothing wrong with me...except acute chronic fear.

Age | Rest | Virtue | Virtue |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Greed is the latest and the most absolute of our passions.

Age |

Vannevar Bush

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers— conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

Age | World |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

It was that of a lady named Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe. And, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which is what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry: One of the leading composers of the day, Gustav Mahler, composer of "Das Lied von der Erde" and other light classics, one of the leading architects, Walter Gropius, of the "Bauhaus" school of design, and one of the leading writers, Franz Werfel, author of the "Song of Bernadette" and other masterpieces. It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

Age |

Turkish Proverbs

What a man suffers is the punishment of his tongue.

Age | Man |

Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.

Age |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

The fact that no two major countries have done to war since they both got McDonald’s is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America’s willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization–from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.[...] McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars.

Age | Important | Influence | Parents | Principles | Thinking | Time | Woman | Teacher |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.

Age | Language | Passion |