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

John H. Aughey, fully John Hill Aughey

This is one of the sad conditions of life, that experience is not transmissible. No man will learn from the suffering of another; he must suffer himself.

Experience | Life | Life | Man | Suffering | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

William L. Abbott

Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.

Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Visvanatha Chakravarti, fully Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura

The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensous wonder... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Experience | God | Joy | Life | Life | Mystical | Perception | Self | Wonder | Beauty | God |

Mark Van Doren

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.

Character | Experience | Wisdom | Words |

Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"

For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience; since many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful nor follow what is good. For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reasoning that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied thereby, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But when he has had actual experience of combustion his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore reasoning does not suffice, but experience does.

Doubt | Experience | Intuition | Knowledge | Light | Man | Mind | Neglect | Rest | Wisdom |

Howard D. Bare

Four men climbed a mountain to see the view. The first wore new and expensive shoes which did not fit, and he complained constantly of his feet. The second had a greedy eye and kept wishing for this house or that farm. The third saw clouds and worried for fear it might rain. But the fourth really saw the marvelous view. His mountain top experience was looking away from the valley out of which he had just climbed to higher things.

Experience | Fear | Men | Wisdom |

William Beebe, fully Charles William Beebe

Before I started on my trip around the world, someone gave me one of the most valuable hints I have ever had. It consists merely in shutting your eyes when you are in the midst of a great moment, or close to some marvel of time or space, and convincing yourself that you are at home again with the experience over and past; and what would you wish most to have examined or done if you could turn time and space back again.

Experience | Past | Space | Time | Wisdom | World |

Gamaliel Bailey

Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Wisdom | Happiness |

James Boswell

All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Experience | Freedom | Will | Wisdom |

Lyman Bryson

Education is anything that we do for the purpose of taking advantage of the experience of some one else.

Education | Experience | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

We should round every day of stirring action with an evening of thought. We learn nothing of our experience except we must upon it.

Action | Day | Experience | Nothing | Thought | Wisdom | Learn |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How willingly I would as a poet exchange some of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books for some experience of life and man. But all this grumbling is a vile thing.

Books | Experience | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Wisdom |

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.

Experience | Meditation | Mind | Nothing | Wisdom |

Horace Bushnell

The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.

Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |

Ora Capelli

Joy is indeed a precious quality which very few experience in their lives. The person who knows how to enjoy life will never grow old no matter how many years he can call his own. It is easy to be happy at specific times, but there is a certain art in being happy and contented every day.

Art | Day | Experience | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Will | Wisdom | Art | Old |

Al Capp, full name Alfred Gerald Caplin

Any place that anyone young can learn something useful from with experience is an educational institution.

Experience | Wisdom | Learn |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

I am of opinion that there are no proverbial sayings which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences.

Experience | Mother | Opinion | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.

Experience | Nothing | Wisdom |