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

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The only person who can have “everything” is one who can be satisfied with his minimum requirements of food and clothing, and the Creator is the center of his world.

Character | World |

Antisthenes NULL

A wise man will always be contented with his condition, and will live rather according to his precepts of virtue, than according to the customs of his country.

Character | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wise |

Joseph von Auffenberg

He that does not respect confidence will never find happiness in his path. The belief in virtue vanishes from his heart; the source of nobler actions becomes extinct in him.

Belief | Character | Confidence | Heart | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Respect | Happiness |

Berthold Auerbach

Discontent is the source of all trouble, but also of all progress in individuals and in nations.

Character | Discontent | Nations | Progress |

H. B.

The first real mental illumination I remember to have experienced was when I saw that the universe exists in each of its individual atoms - that is, the universe is the result of a few simple processes infinitely repeated. When a drop of water has been mathematically measured, every principle will have been used which would be called form in the measurement of the heavens. All life on the globe is sustained by digestion and assimilation; when by voluntary and traumatic action these stop death follows. The history of an individual mind is the history of the race. Know one thing in its properties and relations and you will know all things.

Action | Character | Death | History | Individual | Life | Life | Mind | Race | Universe | Will |

Rona Barrett born Rhona Bernstein, Mrs. William Trowbridge

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul.

Character | Individual | Soul |

Stephen Vincent Benét

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Character | Day | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo. Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one.

Beginning | Character | Laughter | Need | Sound |

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The greatest manifestation of your love for the Almighty can be expressed on your day of death. Before your death, you might be thinking about how you have not fulfilled all of your wishes and plans. In the moments before your death you might have complaints against the Almighty, or you might fatalistically accept your death by saying, What can be done? My body is giving in to the laws of nature. The doctors have given up hope.” Both of these attitudes are wrong You now face the greatest challenge of your life. You have the potential to submit yourself to the will of the Almighty with love. This level takes preparation. If a person has not mastered control of his thoughts, he is likely to waste his last moments thinking of petty resentments and desires. Frequently confusion and fear of death swallow up every other thought unless one has prepared for that moment.

Body | Challenge | Character | Control | Day | Death | Fear | Giving | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Thinking | Thought | Waste | Will | Wishes | Wrong | Thought |

Nancy Astor, fully Lady Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess Astor

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer - into selflessness which links us with all humanity.

Character | Education | Humanity | Self |

Louis-Aimé Martin

It requires two indiscreet persons to institute a quarrel; one individual cannot quarrel alone.

Character | Individual |

Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

He who, for the sake of learning, lowers himself by exposing his ignorance, will ultimately be elevated.

Character | Ignorance | Learning | Will |

Philip S. Berg, originally Feivel Gruberger

Our souls are like streams that can never rest until they once again mingle with the Infinite sea... We are here to earn the beneficence of the Creator. This is a process sometimes too difficult to accomplish in one lifetime, but fortunately we are provided with as many lifetimes as necessary.

Character | Rest |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

It is the whole soul, in fact, that gives rise to the free decision, and the act will be so much the freer the more the dynamic series with which it is connected tends to be the fundamental self... but the moments at which we thus grasp ourselves are rare, and that is why we are rarely free.

Character | Decision | Dynamic | Self | Soul | Will |

John Abercrombie

The sound and proper exercise of the imagination may be made to contribute to the cultivation of all that is virtuous and estimable in the human character.

Character | Cultivation | Imagination | Sound |