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

Babylonian Talmud

Righteous men are greater after their death than during their lifetime.

Death | Men | Wisdom |

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 |

William Cullen Bryant

The press, important as is its office, is but the servant of the human intellect, and its ministry is for good or for evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill which grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill he hopper with poisoned grain, and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Character | Death | Evil | Good | Important | Office | Will | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

There are but three events which concern men: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live.

Birth | Death | Events | Life | Life | Men | Neglect | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Action | Age | Events | Nature | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.

Courage | Death | Life | Life | Soul | Wisdom |

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

Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinions of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.

Opinion | Wisdom |

Frank Gelett Burgess

If in the last few years you hadn't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.

Opinion | Wisdom |

Thomas Buxton, fully Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet

The longer I live, the more I am certain that the difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, between the great and the insignificant, is energy - invincible determination - a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory.

Death | Determination | Energy | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The meaning of life cannot be separated from the meaning of death. Even the sun dies, so death is natural too. Only suffering must be appeased.

Death | Life | Life | Meaning | Suffering | Wisdom |

Samuel Butler

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

Death | History | Opinion | Public | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Charlie Chaplin, formally Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin

Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.

Beauty | Death | Nature | Omnipresence | Sadness | Wisdom |

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 |