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

Publius Syrus

He guards his own property who wishes the common property to be safe.

Property | Safe | Wisdom | Wishes |

Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.

Giving | Man | Wisdom |

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority.

Anarchy | Authority | Capacity | Distrust | Enemy | Force | Government | Politics | Power | Property | Self | Self-interest | Sentiment | Wisdom |

Wilbur Riegert

Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man.

Disrespect | God | Humility | Man | Poverty | Wisdom | God |

Beverly Rubik

[Paraphrase from “Brain and Mind” article] “Local” healing reflects information from subtle bioenergy fields. By contrast, healing that appears non-local in space and time may be mediated by “information associated with conscious intention”... In electromagnetic healing... the living human organism contains many highly sensitive natural oscillators that join to form a collective “biofield.” This field is “a collective property of the organism and cannot be reduced to biomolecular events.” In this case, information is transmitted by external fields of similar frequency, with healing occurring through a “tuning” effect... “Information is about relationship and exists only in relationship.” Therefore, information grounded in love - “the highest-quality relationship” - may produce healing by overcoming information originated from the more mechanical levels of physical organization... “For science and medicine to embrace life’s full capacity and the full human potential we need to go beyond mechanical concepts that were developed for machines.”

Capacity | Contrast | Events | Intention | Life | Life | Love | Machines | Mind | Need | Organization | Property | Relationship | Science | Space | Time | Wisdom |

Leon Samson

Revolution is a transfer of property from class to class.

Property | Revolution | Wisdom |

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another’s expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects.

Advice | Better | Character | Defects | Giving | Little | Receive | Wisdom |

George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea upon paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page. You cannot fathom your mind. It is a well of thought which has no bottom. The more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful will it be. If you neglect to think yourself, and use other people's thoughts, giving them utterance only, you will never know what you are capable of. At first your ideas may come out in lumps, homely and shapeless; but no matter; time and perseverance will arrange and polish them. Learn to think, and you will learn to write; the more you think, the better you will express your ideas.

Better | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Neglect | People | Perseverance | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom | Learn | Think | Thought |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them and as the number of those possessing it is increased.

Nations | Property | Wisdom |

Henry Clay Trumbull

Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.

Cost | Faith | Prayer | Wisdom |

Lane Weston

There is no such thing as an average man. Each one of us is a unique individual. Each one of us expresses his humanity and his divinity in some distinctly different way. The beauty and the bloom of each human soul is a thing apart - a separate holy miracle under God, never once repeated throughout all the millenniums of time.

Beauty | Divinity | God | Humanity | Individual | Man | Soul | Time | Unique | Wisdom | Beauty |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.

Man | Mind | Necessity | Wisdom |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects that surround him, he is instinctively led to appropriate to himself everything that he can lay his hands upon; he has no notion of the property of others; but as he gradually learns the value of things and begins to perceive that he may in his turn be despoiled, he becomes more circumspect, and he ends by respecting those rights in others which he wishes to have respected in himself. The principle which the child derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects which he may call his own.

Ends | Man | Property | Rights | Wisdom | Wishes | Child | Value |

William Whately

That is true humility to have a meane esteeme of himselfe out of a true apprehension of Gods greatnesse.

Humility | Wisdom |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class that is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence in democratic communities the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.

Equality | Majority | Men | People | Property | Revolution | Wisdom |

Edmund Wilson

You cannot have ecstasy and divine vision without bitterness and despair, and both of these are the property of youth.

Bitterness | Despair | Ecstasy | Property | Vision | Wisdom | Youth |