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

Thomas Arnold, aka Thomas "Tom" Arnold the Younger

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and more than all, must be prayed for.

Knowledge | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

George Matthew Adams

We can accomplish almost anything within our ability if we but think we can! Every great achievement in this world was first carefully thought out... Think - but to a purpose. Think constructively. Think as you read. Think as you listen. Think as you travel and eyes reveal new situations. Think as you work daily at your place in life. There can be no advancement or success without serious thought.

Ability | Achievement | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Think | Thought |

Alexander Ziskind Maimon

When performing a good deed and other people are present, imagine you are standing in a forest surrounded only by trees and flowers. In the long run there is no difference between the two situations. Just as the trees have no awareness of what you are doing, so too in the long run it does not make a difference what those people thought about you for the few seconds they saw you.

Awareness | Character | Good | People | Present | Thought | Awareness | Thought |

William Wordsworth

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself that either thought or theory.

Action | Character | Thought | Thought |

Spiro T. Agnew, fully Spiro Theodore Agnew

Intellectual and spiritual leaders hailed the cause of civil rights and gave little thought to where the civil disobedience road might end. But defiance of the law, even for the best reasons, opens a tiny hole in the dike and soon a trickle becomes a flood... And while no thinking person denies that social injustice exits, no thinking person can condone any group, for any reason, taking justice into his own hands. Once this is permitted, democracy dies; for democracy is sustained through one great premise: the premise that civil rights are balanced by civil responsibilities.

Cause | Civil disobedience | Defiance | Democracy | Disobedience | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Little | Reason | Rights | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Apocrypha NULL

How bitter is the thought of death to him who lives at peace!

Death | Peace | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Francis Wayland

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness.

Character | Dignity | Love | Soul | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Intellect | Thought |

William Blake

One thought fills immensity.

Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher

Nothing is thought rare which is not new, and followed; yet we know that what was worn some twenty years ago comes into grace again.

Grace | Nothing | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Bertha Bailey

The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to ensure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only be aware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you , until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.

Appreciation | Beauty | Life | Life | Order | Right | Spirit | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | World | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |

Alan Barth

Tolerance of opinions which are thought to be innocuous is as easy, as acts of charity that entail no sacrifice. But the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. The argument for such tolerance must be made on the ground that it is useful to the society... that free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.

Argument | Better | Charity | Majority | Sacrifice | Society | Thought | Wisdom | Society | Thought |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

If the memory is more flexible in childhood, it is more tenacious in mature age; if childhood has sometimes the memory of words, old age has that of things, which impress themselves according tot he clearness of the conception of the thought which we wish to retain.

Age | Childhood | Memory | Old age | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Old | Thought |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence.

Action | Example | Habit | Influence | Reason | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Baron Broghill

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

Invention | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Gamaliel Bradford

Thinking is the process that I hold in horror. I have thought for fifty years, with the most ghastly and disastrous results, mostly thoughts of my own, and if I attempt to superpose the thoughts of other people, I find my mental equipment utterly inadequate to the strain.

People | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Christian Nestell Bovee

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

News | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Christian Nestell Bovee

A good thought is a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked, then he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the man who is the first to quote it to us.

God | Good | Man | Thought | Wisdom | God | Thought |