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

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.

Conversation | Disease | Evil | People | Philosophy | Silence |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of a disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Disease | Good | Will | Value |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men's prayers are a disease of the will.

Disease | Men | Will |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. The more or less depends on structure or temperament. Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung. Of what use is fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature?

Books | Criticism | Fortune | Genius | Man | Nature | Talent |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

Envy is a blemish of the mind; it is to the mind what disease is to the body.

Body | Disease | Envy | Mind |

Ronald S. Miller

Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources.

Ability | Alchemy | Body | Compassion | Decision | Disease | Expectation | Heart | Hope | Humility | Patience | People | Practice | Qualities | Relationship | Risk | Time | Trust | Expectation |

Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.

Age | Ambition | Contentment | Death | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Indolence | Men | Mind | Old age | Power | Ambition | Failure | Old |

Thomas Fuller

Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. To much overcharges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. It is thought, and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.

Books | Disease | Health | Mind | Nature | Reading | Thought |

William Hazlitt

In love we never think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love.

Beauty | Love | Qualities | Think |

Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

The safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or that philosophical speculation, or this or that theological creed, but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends social disorganization upon the track of immorality, as surely as its sends physical disease after physical trespasses.

Belief | Creed | Disease | Morality | Nature | Order | Speculation |

Emmet Fox

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open.

Difficulty | Disease | Enough | Love | Will |

Ethiopian Proverbs

He who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured.

Disease |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person’s experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experiences. If a person has a choleric temperament, for instance, his mode of reaction is "quick and strong.” But what he is quick or strong about depends on his kind of relatedness, his character. If he is a productive, just, loving person he will react quickly and strongly when he loves, when he is enraged by injustice, and when he is impressed by a new idea. If he is a destructive or sadistic character, he will be quick and strong in his destructiveness or in his cruelty. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste. But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance.

Character | Consequences | Regard | Will |

George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff

He who has got rid of the disease "Tomorrow" has the possibility to attain what he is here for.

Disease |

Hans Zinnser

Infectious disease is one of the great tragedies of living things - the struggle for existence between two different forms of life... Incessantly, the pitiless war goes on, without quarter or armistice - a nationalism of species against species.

Disease | Existence | Struggle | War |

Herman E. Daly

Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by economic physicians who treat the basic malady of unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited growth.... Yet one certainly does not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage

Disease | Wants |

Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

Disease | Important |

James Allen

Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought... The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it... Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food... Clean thoughts make clean habits.

Change | Diet | Disease | Fear | Man | People | Will |

Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

Disease | Suffering |