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 Chalmers

Benevolence is not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. It is a business with men as they are, and with human life as drawn by the rough hand of experience. It is a duty which you must perform at the call of principle; though there be no voice of eloquence to give splendor to your exertions, and no music of poetry to lead your willing footsteps through the bowers of enchantment. It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic emotion. It is an exertion of principle. :You must go to the poor man’s cottage, though no verdure flourish around it, the gentleness of its murmurs. If you look for the romantic simplicity of fiction you will be disappointed; but it is your duty to persevere in spite of every discouragement. Benevolence is not merely a feeling but a principle; not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business for the hand to execute.

Benevolence | Business | Character | Duty | Experience | Gentleness | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Men | Music | Poetry | Simplicity | Truth | Will | Business |

Samuel Butler

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly his character appear in spite of him.

Character | Literature | Man | Music | Work |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue.

Character | Heaven | Man | Men | Music | Play | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Henry Giles

The direct relation of music is not to ideas, but to emotions - in the works of its greatest masters, it is more marvelous, more mysterious than poetry.

Character | Emotions | Ideas | Music | Poetry | Wisdom |

James Ramsay MacDonald

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words and thoughts; daily forgiveness, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture or the blending notes of music which constitute the man.

Character | Forgiveness | Good | Man | Music | Temptation | Words |

Plotinus NULL

All music - since its though is upon melody and rhythm - must be the earthly representation of the music there is in the rhythm of the Ideal Realm.

Character | Melody | Music |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Art | Music | Poetry | Wisdom | Art |

Hans Christian Anderson

Where words fail, music speaks.

Music | Wisdom | Words |

William Beveridge

It calls in my spirits, composes my thoughts, delights my ear, recreates my mind, and so not only fits me for after business, but fills my heart, at the present, with pure and useful thoughts; so that when the music sounds the sweetliest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest into my mind.

Business | Heart | Mind | Music | Present | Truth | Wisdom |

Antoine Bettini

In the germ, when the first trace of life begins to stir, music is the nurse of the soul; it murmurs in the ear, and the child sleeps; the tones are companions of his dreams, they are the world in which he lives.

Dreams | Life | Life | Music | Soul | Wisdom | World | Child |

Bettina Skrzypczak

In the germ, when the first trace of life begins to stir, music is the nurse of the soul; it murmurs in the ear, and the child sleeps; the tones are companions of his dreams, they are the world in which he lives.

Dreams | Life | Life | Music | Soul | Wisdom | World | Child |

Samuel Bowles III

There's a strange music in the stirring wind.

Music | Wisdom |

Catherine Bowen, née Catherine Shober Drinker

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

Conversation | Music | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Digestion exists for health, and health exists for life, and life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

Health | Life | Life | Love | Music | Wisdom |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

If I had my life to live again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Character | Life | Life | Music | Nature | Poetry | Rule | Wisdom | Loss |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Character | Life | Life | Music | Nature | Poetry | Rule | Wisdom | Loss |