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

Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams

What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.

Character | Enough | Little | Youth |

Bias NULL

It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend.

Better | Character | Enemy | Friend | Will | Friends |

Barbara Brennan

The meaning of life is experienced when we are in touch with our unique essence, sometimes called the divine spark within... It is both individual and universal. When we are fully aware of this unique inner radiance, we feel what it is to be utterly alive. We experience unconditional love. We sense complete safety because that spark also connects us to the universal divinity within all things.

Character | Divinity | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Sense | Unique |

Abel Bonnard

The moral life of any people rises or falls with the vitality or decay of its religious life.

Character | Life | Life | People |

Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

There is only one Duty. It is to realize the divinity within... our most sacred life purpose, the most honored ground of existence, and everything else must be made to subserve it.

Character | Divinity | Duty | Existence | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Sacred |

Sarah T. Bolton, fully Sarah Tittle Barrett Bolton

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of work.

Character | Habit | Success | Wisdom | Work |

Hugh Blair

Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare.

Accomplishment | Age | Appearance | Artifice | Character | Contempt | Falsehood | Future | Learning | Old age | Perfidy | Power | Shame | Sincerity | Youth | Youth | Old |

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.

Character | Heart | Knowledge | Price | World |

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

If you want to earn more - learn more. If you want to get more out of the world you must put more into the world. For, after all, men will get no more out of life than they put into it.

Character | Life | Life | Men | Will | World | Learn |

Marcia Borowsky

A child asked a man to pick a flower for her. that was simple enough. But when she said, "Now put it back," the man experienced a baffling helplessness he never knew before. "How can you explain that it cannot be done?" he asked. "How can one make clear to young people that there are some things which, once broken, once mutilated, can never be replaced or mended?"

Character | Enough | Man | People | Child |

John Albert Broadus

All the sin that has darkened human life an saddened human history began in believing in a falsehood.

Character | Falsehood | History | Life | Life | Sin |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

James Boswell

It is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another.

Character | Conscience | Man | Rights |

Aaron M. Brafman

The goal of all education, preaching, and instruction is the development of mature individuals who will understand that difficulties in life are Divine-ordained challenges to overcome and opportunities for growth, and not excuses for defeat and self-ruination.

Character | Defeat | Education | Growth | Life | Life | Self | Will | Instruction | Understand |

Gilbert Burnet

That is not the best sermon which makes the hearers go away talking to one another, and praising the speaker, but which makes them go away thoughtful and serious, and hastening to be alone.

Character | Talking |

Hugh Blair

The prevailing manners of an age depend, more than we are aware of, or are willing to allow, on the conduct of the women: this is one of the principal things on which the great machine of human society turns.

Age | Character | Conduct | Manners | Society | Society |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Most people are dissatisfied, because too few know that the distance between one and nothing is greater than that between one and a thousand.

Character | Nothing | People |

Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork

In the past few decades American institutions have struggled with the temptations of politics. Professions and academic disciplines that once possessed a life and structure of their own have steadily succumbed, in some cases almost entirely, to the belief that nothing matters beyond politically desirable results, however achieved.

Belief | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Politics |