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

Joseph Addison

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

Conversation | Nature |

Joseph Addison

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Conversation | Enemy | Enjoyment | Friendship | Happiness |

Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman

Not only should we be unashamed of grief, confident that its expression will not permanently hurt us, but we should also possess the wisdom to talk about our loss and through that creative conversation with friends and companions begin to reconstruct the broken fragments of our lives... should not resist the sympathy and stimulation of social interaction. We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow healing process of time . . . We should anticipate these stages in our emotional convalescence: unbearable pain, poignant grief, empty days, resistance to consolation, disinterestedness in life, gradually giving way under the healing sunlight of love,friendship, social challange, to the new weaving of a pattern of action and the acceptance of the irresistible challenge of life.

Acceptance | Action | Challenge | Conversation | Giving | Sympathy | Time | Will | Wisdom | Loss | Friends | Learn |

William O. Douglas, fully Judge William Orville Douglas

Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.

Discretion | Freedom |

Mary Anne Radmacher

Living in the present moment requires discretion toward memory. Without memory we’d have amnesia. What good would there be in that? Offer discretion and discernment for our past with a broad spectrum of forgiveness. As for our present moment, delight. And dedication to remain fully present to all the possibility

Dedication | Discernment | Discretion | Good | Memory | Past | Present |

Maurice Chevalier, fully Maurice Auguste Chevalier

An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public.

Conversation | Life | Life |

Maxwell Maltz

Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.

Action | Conversation | Thinking |

Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL

At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool.

Discretion | Play |

Mexican Proverbs

Conversation is food for the soul.

Conversation |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Human understanding is marvelously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

Conversation | Understanding |

Michael S. Josephson

It’s a sign of troubled times when the concept of “pressure” becomes an acceptable excuse for ethical shortcuts and moral shortcomings. Pressures are just temptations in disguise and it’s never been acceptable to give in to temptation. Ethics is about the way things ought to be, not about the way things are. When it comes to ethics, motive is very important. A person of character does the right thing for the right reason. Compliance is about what we must do; ethics is about what we should do. Ethical people often do more than the law requires and less than it allows. The area of discretion between the legal “must” and the moral “should” tests our character. Noble talk and framed ethics statements are no substitute for principled conduct. The test is doing the right thing.

Character | Compliance | Discretion | Disguise | Ethics | Law | People | Right |

Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL

Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.

Conversation | Order | Intellect |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe (monetary) contractions of 1920-1, 1929-33, and 1937-8. No other 20 year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions. This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System and that the severity of each of the major contractions—1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities. Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, so that mistakes—excusable or not—can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic—this is the key political argument against an independent central bank. To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

Argument | Body | Discretion | Evidence | Freedom | History | Instability | Men | Money | Power | Price | Reserve | System | War | World |

Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL

I am Milarepa, the yogi from Tibet. There is a great purpose to not having possessions." He then explained this in a spiritual song: "I have no desire for wealth or possessions, and so I have nothing. I do not experience the initial suffering of having to accumulate possessions, the intermediate suffering of having to guard and keep up possessions, nor the final suffering of loosing the possessions. This is a wonderful thing. I have no desire for friends or relations. I do not experience the initial suffering of forming an attachment, the intermediate suffering of having disagreements with friends and family, nor the final suffering of parting with them. Therefore it is good to be without friends and relations. I have no desire for pleasant conversation. I do not experience the initial suffering of beginning conversation, the intermediate suffering of wondering whether to continue the conversation, nor the final suffering of the conversation deteriorating. Therefore I do not delight in pleasant conversation. I have no desire for a home land and have no fixed residence. I do not experience the initial suffering of partiality of thinking that 'this is my land and that place isn't.' I do not experience the intermediate suffering of yearning for my land. And I do not experience the final suffering of having to protect my land. Therefore I do not have a fixed abode.

Beginning | Conversation | Desire | Experience | Good | Land | Partiality | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Thinking | Wealth | Parting | Friends |

Rabbi Nahum Ward and Shelley Mann

Our relationship with eating is one of our most intimate experiences of the earth. When we eat, we take another life into our own. We consume life in order to live. How do we do this with respect? How do we take life, and yet maintain our sensitivity to life? Kashrut - rooted in the Bible, and developed by the Rabbis - is the Jewish tradition's clearly delineated response to this challenge. Kashrut sets limits on what foods we can eat: for example, we can only eat certain (primarily domesticated) animals, and we must slaughter them in the least painful, most respectful way. The blood must be drained and buried, because the life is in the blood and must be returned to the earth. There are also prohibitions against eating shellfish, and the mixing of meat and milk products. We felt a need to expand this traditional understanding of Kashrut to include global environmental and social issues which the Rabbis of two thousand years ago did not face. In conversation with Jewish people in many communities, we have developed the following tentative guidelines for a Kashrut which speaks to our planetary concerns.

Conversation | Global | Life | Life | Need | Order | People | Relationship | Understanding | Following |

Nāgārjuna, fully Acharya Nāgārjuna NULL

Those who speak with discretion are respected by mankind, As the sun, emerging from the shadows, by its rays creates great warmth.

Discretion |

National Commission on Excellence in Education NULL

While the national conversation about education would never be the same, stunningly few of the Commission’s recommendations actually have been enacted. Now is not the time for more educational research or reports or commissions. We have enough commonsense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools. The missing ingredient isn’t even educational at all. It’s political. Too often, state and local leaders have tried to enact reforms of the kind recommended in A Nation at Risk only to be stymied by organized special interests and political inertia. Without vigorous national leadership to improve education, states and local school systems simply cannot overcome the obstacles to making the big changes necessary to significantly improve our nation’s K-12 schools

Conversation | Education | Enough | Research | Risk | Time | Leadership |