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

John Charles Salak

Let us think only of spending the present day well. then when tomorrow shall have come, it will be called today, and then we will think about it.

Character | Day | Present | Tomorrow | Will | Think |

William Gilmore Simms

Have I done anything for society? I have then done more for myself. Let that truth be always present to thy mind, and work without cessation.

Character | Mind | Present | Society | Truth | Work |

Avraham Yellin

When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes.

Character | Joy | Pain | Past | Present | Suffering |

Daniel Webster

We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men - the lights of the world, and of the present age - have given their sanction.

Age | Character | Influence | Men | Opinion | Power | Present | Principles | Public | World |

Mendel Zabaraz

Only fools waste their present moments regretting what is over and done with. They will constantly say, “If only I hadn’t gotten involved in this venture, I wouldn’t have suffered.” “If only I would have stayed an hour longer, this would not have happened.” We are not prophets and there is no possible way to know in advance exactly what will be. Try to protect yourself from harm, but realize we can never plan for every contingency.

Character | Harm | Plan | Present | Waste | Will |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.

Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

John Welwood

Look at our present life circumstances, whatever they may be, as the raw material of our learning... We must stop regarding ourselves as victims of circumstances, and start to acknowledge that we are not here purely by accident. The master within is trying to help us wake up by confronting us with our current life situation, which contains all the lessons we need to learn in order to grow into more fully developed human beings.

Accident | Character | Circumstances | Learning | Life | Life | Need | Order | Present | Learn |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Neither the tenuous things of the human spirit nor the gross material needs of human life can come in contact with this business enterprise [Big Business] in such a way as to deflect its course from the line of least resistance, which is the line of greatest present gain within the law.

Business | Character | Law | Life | Life | Present | Spirit | Business |

Louis K. Anspacher, fully Louis Kannan Anspacher

Your present is... elastic to embrace infinity.

Present | Wisdom |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.

Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

In that continuity of becoming which is reality itself, the present moment is constituted by the quasi-instantaneous section effected by our perception in the flowing mass; and this section is precisely that which we call the material world. Our bodies occupies its centre; it is, in this material world, that part of which we directly feel the flux; in its actual state the actuality of our present lies.

Perception | Present | Reality | Wisdom | World |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present as going to be, it exists not yet; and when we think it as existing, it is already past.

Future | Nothing | Past | Present | Wisdom | Think | Understand |

Charlotte Joko Beck

Our life is always absolute: that’s all there is. The truth is not somewhere else. But we have minds that are trying to burn the past or the future. The living present - Buddhahood - is rarely encountered.

Absolute | Future | Life | Life | Past | Present | Truth | Wisdom |

Henry George Bohn

There is nothing can equal the tender hours when life is first in bloom, when the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers, finds everywhere perfume; when the present is all and it questions not if those flowers shall pass away, but pleased with its own delightful lot, dreams never of decay.

Dreams | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Wisdom |