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

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

O Motherland. Bless us with a benevolent mind. Help us realize all the knowledge with the each passing day and may I acquire wealth from the earth.

Heaven | Mother | Wise | Happiness |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Little | Ugly | Will | Wise |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.

Mind | Wise |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal, the variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell. Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings. It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it.

Man | Speech | Time | Wise | Learn |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

The word he used was not wallowing, there being no animals on Anarres to make wallows; it was a compound, meaning literally coating continually and thickly with excrement. The flexibility and precision of Pravic lent itself to the creation of vivid metaphors quite unforeseen by its inventors.

Wise |

Valmiki NULL

Anger is the enemy which takes one’s life. Anger is enemy with the face of a friend. Anger is like a very sharp sword. Anger destroys everything.

Action | Good | Man | Misfortune | Safe | Tragedy | Wise | Misfortune |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.

Good | Power | Wise |

Valmiki NULL

Words of conciliation to the rakshasas will not bring out any good (Soft words will not have any effect on a rakshasa). In the same way one cannot pacify an immensly wealthy person by offering him material things.

Discussion | Men | Wise |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.

Land | Power | Wise |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

The greater part of the city is built upon a high hill, which rises from an extensive plain, but several of its circles extend for some distance beyond the base of the hill, which is of such a size that the diameter of the city is upward of two miles, so that its circumference becomes about seven. On account of the humped shape of the mountain, however, the diameter of the city is really more than if it were built on a plain.

Men | Rule | Wise |

Tryon Edwards

Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men.

Comfort | Consolation | God | Man | Sympathy | Wise | God |

Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

All the various kinds of precepts are aimed at helping people follow the rules. People who follow the rules can help maintain order in society and resolve the problems faced by mankind. Thus, the moral precepts are the basis for world peace.

Good | Wise |

Tryon Edwards

He who can suppress a moment's anger may prevent a day of sorrow

Courage | Giving | Good | Men | Resolution | Strength | Will | Wise |

Tryon Edwards

He that is patient will persevere; and he that perseveres will often have occasion for, as well as trial of patience.

Wise |

Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming

Making friends requires a few measures of gallantry; cultivating true character needs a bit of innocence.

Wise | Yielding |

Turkish Proverbs

The world is like that: one gives a melon, the other gets the stomach cramps.

Man | Wise |

Turkish Proverbs

A man does not seek his luck, luck seeks its man.

Men | Wise |

Turkish Proverbs

A man is judged by his work.

Man | Wise | Old |

Turkish Proverbs

Sorrow is to the soul what the worm is to wood

Music | Wise |

Turkish Proverbs

A thousand friends are too few; one enemy is one too many.

Friend | Wise |