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

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.

Irony | Lust | Mind | Remorse | System | Waste |

Thomas Merton

I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts.

Confidence | God | Humility | Man | Meaning | Mistrust | Mystery | Perfection | Power | Present | Self | Time | Unique | Waste | World | Theoretical | God | Afraid |

Thomas Merton

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Man | Waste |

Thomas Merton

May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. It is more than silence.

Circumstances | Individual | Man | Men | Reason | Waste |

Thomas Nagel

Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.

Mind | Waste | Will | Understand |

Thomas Nagel

The seductive appeal of objective reality depends on a mistake. It is not the given. Sometimes ... the truth is not found by traveling as far away from one's personal perspective as possible.

Impulse | Mind | Objectivity | Philosophy | Principles | Question | Reality | Thinking | Understanding | Waste | Weakness | Will | Work | World | Think | Understand |

Tim McGraw, fully Samuel Timothy "Tim" McGraw

Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

Waste |

Thomas Tickell

The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd!

Age | Beauty | Books | Children | Cost | Credit | Day | Disdain | Example | Glory | Grace | Heaven | Hope | Kill | Little | Love | Marriage | Nature | Reward | Sense | Silence | Thought | Time | Truth | Wants | Waste | Wisdom | Beauty | Old | Thought |

Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry

For the unconquerable mind. We give You thanks, O God, for the harvest of knowledge, patiently gathered over long years by ongoing generations of scholars, and now laid up for the needs of humanity in our universities. For the increasing mastery of special skills, for victory over ills which people have suffered through ignorance, for confidence in the reliable order of nature, for the wisdom which long experience adds to much learning, for ever new light falling on old mysteries, as for all the joys of our part and portion in the unconquerable mind: we give thanks.

Contempt | Love | Neglect | Waste | Wealth | Worship | Forgive |

William Cowper

A Fable - A raven, while with glossy breast Her new-laid eggs she fondly press'd, And, on her wicker-work high mounted, Her chickens prematurely counted (A fault philosophers might blame, If quite exempted from the same), Enjoy'd at ease the genial day; 'Twas April, as the bumpkins say, The legislature call'd it May. But suddenly a wind, as high As ever swept a winter sky, Shook the young leaves about her ears, And fill'd her with a thousand fears, Lest the rude blast should snap the bough, And spread her golden hopes below. But just at eve the blowing weather And all her fears were hush'd together: And now, quoth poor unthinking Ralph. 'Tis over, and the brood is safe; (For ravens, though, as birds of omen, They teach both conjurors and old women To tell us what is to befall, Can’t prophesy themselves at all.) The morning came, when neighbour Hodge, Who long had mark'd her airy lodge, And destined all the treasure there A gift to his expecting fair, Climb’d like a squirrel to his dray, And bore the worthless prize away. Moral: 'Tis Providence alone secures In every change both mine and yours: Safety consists not in escape From dangers of a frightful shape; An earthquake may be bid to spare The man that’s strangled by a hair. Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oft’nest in what least we dread, Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow.

Journey | Land | Plenty | Time | Waste | Wealth |

William Cowper

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

Happy | Waste |

Wendell Phillips

Write on my gravestone: Infidel, Traitor. --infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

Law | Nothing | Public | Waste |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action.

Waste |

Walter Savage Landor

The monument of the greatest man should be only a bust and a name. - If the name alone is insufficient to illustrate the bust, let them both perish.

Children | Love | Tears | Thought | Waste | Thought |

Walter Lippmann

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.

Practice | Shame | Waste |

Washington Irving

When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, books only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.

Awe | Dread | Light | Sound | Waste |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Do not administer punishment when angry.

Past | Present | Waste |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

All emanates from Source!...You're not this body and its accomplishments. You are the observer. Notice it all; and be grateful for the abilities you've been given, the motivation to achieve, and the stuff you've accumulated. But give all the credit to the power of intention, which brought you into existence.

Blame | Change | Fault | Focus | Unhappiness | Waste | Will | Fault | Guilty |