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

Charles Pineau Duclos

An honest reputation is within the reach of all men; they obtain it by social virtues, and by doing their duty. This kind of reputation, it is true, is neither brilliant nor startling, but it is often the most useful for happiness.

Duty | Men | Reputation | Wisdom |

John Sullivan Dwight

Rest is not quitting the busy career; rest is the fitting of self to its sphere.

Rest | Self | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias.

Children | Courage | Example | Good | Man | Prejudice | Will | Wisdom | Words | Think |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.

Good | Greatness | Pain | Rest | Wisdom | World | Happiness |

Albert Einstein

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element; I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details.

God | Rest | Wisdom | World | God |

Felix Frankfurter

To be a success, devote three or four hours a day to being an executive and the rest of the time to thinking.

Day | Rest | Success | Thinking | Time | Wisdom |

Florus NULL

Just as bad is too much silence as too much talk.

Silence | Wisdom |

Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them.

Wisdom | Words | World | Understand |

Euripedes NULL

Your very silence is confession.

Silence | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

I develop the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any other that give the air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so: It appear to me or should not think it, so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so, or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit I believe has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinion and persuade men into measures that I have been, time to time, engaged in promoting.

Habit | Men | Opinion | Time | Wisdom | Words | Think |

Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna or by his Hebrew acronym Gra ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu")

When you lead your sons and daughters in the good way, let your words be tender and caressing, in terms of disciplines that win the heart's assent.

Good | Heart | Wisdom | Words |

Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay

The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire.

Change | Defeat | Power | Wisdom | Words |

Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL

By means of rational thought we have reached the opinion that God knows in advance only the possibilities open to a man in his freedom, not the particular decisions he will make.. It is the opinion of our religion that God never changes... and yet we find in the words of the prophets that God does repent over some things... It is impossible to solve this contradiction if we adopt the view that God knows particular things as particulars.

Contradiction | Freedom | God | Man | Means | Opinion | Religion | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Words | God | Thought |

Jean-Baptiste Girard

By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life.

Life | Life | Wisdom | Words | Learn |