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

Andrew Carnegie

I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated.

Attention | Business | Competition | Good | Important | Man | Price | Service | Success | Wisdom | Work | Business |

François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste genius is only sublime folly.

Folly | Genius | Good | Sense | Taste | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.

Existence | Harmony | Life | Life | Little | Success | Universe | Wisdom | Happiness |

Henry P. Van Dusen

Religion is the reaching out of one's whole being - mind, body, spirit, emotions, intuitions, affections, will - for completion, for inner unity, for true relation with those about us, for right relation to the universe in which we live. Religion is life, a certain kind of life, life as it should and could be, a life of harmony within and true adjustment without - life, therefore, in harmony with the life of God himself.

Body | Emotions | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Mind | Religion | Right | Spirit | Unity | Universe | Will | Wisdom | God |

Tyron Edwards

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.

Attention | Good | Impression | Memory | Wisdom |

Nathanael Emmons, also Nathaniel Emmons

One principal reason why men are so often useless is, that they divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

Attention | Men | Reason | Wisdom |

Henry Ford

Paying attention to simple things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.

Attention | Men | Neglect | Wisdom |

Henry Fielding

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

Heart | Taste | Wisdom |

Carl Frederick

The key to your universe is that you can choose.

Universe | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new.

Day | Good | Little | Men | People | Spirit | Taste | Wisdom | Words |

James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield

It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.

Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

The universe may be conceived as a polygon of a thousand or a hundred thousand sides or facets - and each of these sides or facets may be conceived as representing one special mode of existence. Now, of these thousand sides or modes, all may be equally essential, but three or four only may be turned towards us or be analogous to our organs.

Existence | Universe | Wisdom |

Hermetica NULL

God then, is the source of all things; the Aeon is the power of God; and the work of the Aeon is the Kosmos which never came into being, but is ever coming into being, by the action of the Aeon, and that which olds the universe together is the Aeon.

Action | God | Power | Universe | Wisdom | Work |

John Gunther

Politicians... rise predominantly from... the "lower middle class"; most are self-made men... ; most depend on their political jobs for their livelihood and most have little time, inclination, or opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness.

Attention | Avarice | Education | Greed | Inclination | Little | Men | Opportunity | Qualities | Self | Selfishness | Time | Vulgarity | Wisdom |

A. C. Harwood

There is one type of feeling which is above all important to foster in childhood. Children have naturally an abundant faculty for wonder and reverence. There are so many books, so many radio and television hours, so many encyclopedias and, alas, so many teachers whose aim is to import knowledge quickly and easily without any element of that faculty which the Greeks said was the beginning of philosophy – Wonder. It is strange that an age which has discovered so many marvels in the universe should be so conspicuously lacking in the sense of wonder.

Age | Beginning | Books | Childhood | Children | Important | Knowledge | Philosophy | Reverence | Sense | Television | Universe | Wisdom | Wonder |