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

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place.

Eternal | Eternity | Events | Future | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Past | Present | Reason | Time | Wisdom | God |

Henry George Bohn

There is nothing can equal the tender hours when life is first in bloom, when the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers, finds everywhere perfume; when the present is all and it questions not if those flowers shall pass away, but pleased with its own delightful lot, dreams never of decay.

Dreams | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Wisdom |

Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding

The future is bound to surprise us, but we don't have to be dumbfounded.

Future | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Future | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Children | Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

What is past is past. There is a future left to all men who have the virtue to repent, and the energy to atone.

Energy | Future | Men | Past | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

George Barrell Cheever

For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever present sense of humor; it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence.

Enjoyment | Faith | Health | Humor | Life | Life | Present | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

He who is false to the present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and you will see the effect when the weaving of a lifetime is unraveled.

Duty | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Geoffrey Chaucer

My mind to me a kingdom is; such present joys therein I find, that it excels all other bliss that earth affords.

Earth | Mind | Present | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

Civilization | Past | Present | Wisdom |

John Dewey

The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.

Action | Experience | Faith | Future | Reality | Religion | Sense | Will | Wisdom |

Robert Collyer

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future.

Faith | Future | Present | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell. To live in the future is a contradiction in terms. The future is dead, in the perfectly definite sense it is not alive.

Contradiction | Future | Necessity | Nothing | Past | Present | Sense | Wisdom |