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

Lyall Watson

If all Earth history is compressed into one “day”, the sea is mixed two thousand times in every “minute” of it, distributing warmth and energy evenly round our water-cooled and air-conditioned planet. Every eighteen “seconds” on this collapsed time scale, the world’s rivers dump enough dissolved salts into the sea to double its concentration, but this nevertheless remains around a resolute and reasonable 3 per cent. It is vital that this should be so, because few living cells can survive a salinity which exceeds, even for just a few seconds, a value of 6 per cent. Half the living matter in the world is still found in the sea, and that fact alone seems to make the chemical regulation not only necessary, but possible.

Day | Earth | Energy | Enough | History | Regulation | Time | Wisdom | World | Value |

Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry

The history of thought can be summarized in these words: It is absurd by what it seeks, great by what it finds.

Absurd | History | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Thought |

Francis Wayland

That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self-government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known - these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics.

Awakening | Bible | Children | Conformity | Control | Good | Government | Hate | Heart | Love | Man | Mathematics | Men | Nature | Philosophy | Power | Right | Self | Teach | Wisdom | World | Wrong | Bible | Truths |

Goodwin Watson

Children are unlikely to follow exactly in their parent's footsteps, but children will travel more easily over bridges which the parents use regularly.

Children | Parents | Will | Wisdom |

James Paul Warburg

Throughout history there has never been an evitable war. The greatest danger of war always lies in the widespread acceptance of its inevitability.

Acceptance | Danger | History | War | Wisdom | Danger |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas.

History | Ideas | Wisdom |

Leo Baeck

Only through human freedom and responsibility are history and salvation able to fulfill themselves.

Freedom | History | Responsibility | Salvation |

William Wordsworth

Wisdom sits with children round her knees.

Children | Wisdom |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Fools with bookish knowledge, are children with edged weapons, they hurt themselves, and put others in pain. The half-learned is more dangerous than the simpleton.

Children | Knowledge | Pain | Weapons | Wisdom |

Carly Zucker

What children expect from grownups is not to be 'understood', but only to be loved, even though this love may be expressed clumsily or in sternness. Intimacy does not exist between generations - only trust.

Children | Love | Trust | Wisdom |

Tariq Ali

No ruling class in the whole of history has given up power voluntarily and I don't see that changing.

History | Power |

Charles Williams

The history of Christendom would have been far happier if we all had remembered one rule of intelligence - not to believe a thing more strongly at the end of a bitter argument than at the beginning, not to believe it with the energy of the opposition rather than one's own.

Argument | Beginning | Energy | History | Intelligence | Opposition | Rule | Wisdom |

Temple Bailey, born Irene Temple Bailey

The mother said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today I have given them strength... This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God... I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know that the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.”

Beginning | Better | Children | Courage | Day | Fortitude | God | Journey | Mother | Strength | Will |

Robert Aris Willmott

Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye.

Art | Children | Literature | Wisdom |

Walter Bagehot

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterward.

Civilization | History |

Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci

The sexual act takes on qualitative significance and value which transcends the other meanings the sexual act can have, when lovers use the act purposely to become parents. For now the two lovers express their faith in love itself, in the possibilities open to their children within the social order and in this world.

Children | Faith | Love | Order | Parents | World | Value |

Walter Bagehot

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.

Civilization | History |

John Bellers

Next to the care of our own souls a right education of our children is greatest.

Care | Children | Education | Right |