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

Robert Collyer

God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best.

Excellence | God | Good | Impulse | Life | Life | Longing | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Excellence |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are creatures of despair.

Despair | Enough | Impulse | Man | Truth | Wisdom |

François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis

God speaks to our hearts through the voice of remorse.

God | Remorse | Wisdom |

Declaration of American Women NULL

Man-made barriers, laws, social customs and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies. From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relations, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be... We lack effective political and economic power We have only minor and insignificant roles in making, interpreting and enforcing our laws, in running our political parties, businesses, unions, schools and institutions, in directing the media, in governing our country, in deciding issues of war or peace. We do not seek special privileges, but we demand as a human right a full voice and role for women in determining the destiny of our world, our nation, our families and our individual lives.

Control | Destiny | Family | Ideas | Individual | Individuality | Infancy | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Occupation | Peace | Position | Power | Public | Right | War | Wisdom | Woman | World |

Fitzhugh Dodson

Some people, in working toward a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to reexamine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with a more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it.

Action | Important | People | Sense | Time | Wisdom | Inertia | Value |

Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"

An animal's first impulse is self-preservation.

Impulse | Self | Self-preservation | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing dice.

Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

It makes small difference to the dead if they are buried as tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.

Luxury | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work on us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will. If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries there would be but a small balance in my favor.

Balance | Energy | Originality | People | Strength | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work | World |

Meyrick Goulburn, fully Edward Meyrick Goulburn

Send your audience away with a desire for, and an impulse toward spiritual improvement, or your preaching will be a failure.

Desire | Failure | Improvement | Impulse | Will | Wisdom |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

Awe | Beginning | Eternal | Sense | Wisdom | World |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The expansion of human power has hardly begun, and what we are going to do with our power may either save or destroy the planet. The earth may be of small significance within the infinite universe. But if it is of some significance, we hold the key to it. In our own age we have been force into the realization that there will be either one world, or no world.

Age | Destroy | Earth | Force | Power | Universe | Will | Wisdom | World |

Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL

The expansion of human power has hardly begun, and what we are going to do with our power may either save or destroy the planet. The earth may be of small significance within the infinite universe. But if it is of some significance, we hold the key to it. In our own age we have been force into the realization that there will be either one world, or no world.

Age | Destroy | Earth | Force | Power | Universe | Will | Wisdom | World |