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

William Havard

Let falsehood be a stranger to thy lips; shame on the policy that first began to tamper with the heart to hide its thoughts! And doubly shame on that inglorious tongue, that sold its honesty and told a lie.

Mankind |

William James

I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology -- the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Future | Mankind | Manliness | Mind | Peace | Position | War | Will | Old |

William James

If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.

Better | Business | Mankind | Martyrs | Race | Business |

William Law

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

Age | Association | Example | Heart | History | Human nature | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Regard | Association | Think |

William McKinley

The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes—not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt—through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.

Doctrine | Freedom | Liberty | Love |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There is no mockery like the mockery of that spirit which looks around in the world and believes that all is emptiness.

Mankind | Wisdom |

Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann

The highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible... All knowing that goes beyond the immediate experience of the moment is a matter of faith.

Light | Mankind | World |

Elias L. Magoon

Our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel.

Man | Mankind | Words |

Elihu Root

We all know of course that we cannot abolish all the evils in this world by statute or by the enforcement of statutes, nor can we prevent the inexorable law of nature which decrees that suffering shall follow vice, and all the evil passions and folly of mankind. Law cannot give to depravity the rewards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indifference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of learning. The utmost that government can do is measurably to protect men, not against the wrong they do themselves but against wrong done by others and to promote the long, slow process of educating mind and character to a better knowledge and nobler standards of life and conduct. We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinctively cry out against it, and when we see some things that government may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any government to do, and to hold the particular government of the time and place to a standard of responsibility which no government can possibly meet.

Mankind |

Albert Einstein

If you ask for the purpose or goal of society as a whole or of an individual taken as a whole the question loses its meaning. This is, of course, even more so if you ask the purpose or meaning of nature in general. For in those cases it seems quite arbitrary if not unreasonable to assume somebody whose desires are connected with the happenings.

Action | Consequences | Desire | Earnestness | Fulfillment | Individual | Life | Life | Mankind | Opinion | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Struggle |

William Shakespeare

Should the poor be flattered? No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, and crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.

Despair | Mankind |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

Mankind | Reform |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.

Duty | Liberty | Observation |

Emile Zola

I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.

Birth | Family | Good | Liberty | Progress |

Emile Zola

But you said so yourself, the poor lass will die of it...Do you really want her to die?

Absolute | Conduct | Crime | Evil | Innocence | Justice | Law | Mankind | Office | Public | Suffering | Time | War | Guilty |

Emma Goldman

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.

Birth | Body | Earth | Enjoyment | Guarantee | Heart | Human nature | Individual | Liberty | Men | Mind | Nature | Observation | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Soul | Study | Teach | Wickedness | Will | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |