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

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Everything was possessed of personality, only different from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty... Observation was certain to have its rewards. Interest, wonder, admiration grew, and the fact was appreciated that life was more than mere human manifestation; it was expressed in a multitude of forms. This appreciation enriched Lakota existence. Life was vivid and pulsating; nothing was casual and commonplace. The Indian lived - lived in every sense of the word - from his first to his last breath.

Admiration | Appreciation | Beauty | Blessings | Books | Character | Earth | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Personality | Sense | Wonder | World | Appreciation |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second. By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Acquaintance | Character | Difficulty | Law | Life | Life | Man | Mankind | Nature | Power | Will |

John Locke

The highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.

Care | Character | Liberty | Mistake | Nature | Perfection |

James Russell Lowell

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.

Character | Enthusiasm | Mankind | Nature | Truth |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertions of human nature; and what nature will be honor who honors not the human?

Art | Character | Enemy | Honor | Human nature | Nature | Nothing | Sagacity | Will | Art |

Thomas Merton

The more one seeks ‘the good’ outside oneself as something to be acquired, the more one is faced with the necessity of discussing, studying, understanding, analysing the nature of good. the more, therfore, one becomes involved in abstractions and in the confusion of divergent opinions. The more ‘the good’ is objectively analysed, the more it is treated as something to be attained by special virtuous techniques, the less real it becomes.

Character | Good | Nature | Necessity | Understanding |

Julius Mark

Man's conquest of nature has been astonishing. His failure to conquer human nature has been tragic.

Character | Conquest | Failure | Human nature | Man | Nature | Wisdom | Failure |

Michael Murphy

Exceptional abilities develop most fully in cultures that prize them... no aspect of human nature is immune to social influence.

Character | Human nature | Influence | Nature |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The truth is that it is contrary to the nature of love if it is not violent, and contrary to the nature of violence if it is constant.

Character | Love | Nature | Truth |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

Character | Defects | Human nature | Men | Nature | Philosophy |

Alden C. Palmer

If one lives with Nature a little while, he soon recognizes the harmony of creation... Each of us is, therefore, an instrument of God. When one thinks of his humble self in this light, life takes on a more profound meaning.

Character | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Light | Little | Meaning | Nature | Self |

Robert M. Pirsig

Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.

Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |

Alexander Pope

Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.

Beauty | Character | Nature |

Nisargadatta Maharaj, fully Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli

By watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Acceptance | Attention | Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Intention | Life | Life | Mind | Mother | Nature | Understanding | Work | Understand |