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

Léon Gambetta

History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires.

Growth | History | Nations | Wisdom |

George Gissing, fully George Robert Gissing

The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought.

Influence | Life | Life | Mind | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Truths |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Experience | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Think | Thought |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

Absurd | Good | Influence | Insult | Mankind | Nothing | Pleasure | Wisdom | Wishes | Insult |

Benjamin Franklin

Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid: then shalt thou reach the point of happiness and independence shall by thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.

Abuse | Honesty | Riches | Soul | Wisdom | Happiness |

Cardinal James Gibbons

It is too often seen, that the wiser men about the things of this world, the less wise they are about the things of the next.

Men | Wisdom | Wise | World |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The intellect of the wise is like glass. It admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Heaven | Light | Wisdom | Wise | Intellect |

Brian Greer

There is no separation between a patient’s neurobiology, spiritual life, life perspectives, and quality of life force. Words, and spiritual/therapeutic interventions can tangibly affect a patient’s neurochemistry and physical health just as assuredly as psycho-pharmacological drugs can tangibly affect a patient’s feelings and thoughts... I have found that working with the meaning of a patient’s illness can profoundly alter not only the prognosis but can influence and give meaning to all other aspects of a patient’s life. Depression, for example, is often a direct communication from the soul that one’s belief system is not working... It is all too easy, and part of the human condition, to be misled by our lower half into believing that the sensory world is all that’s real.

Belief | Depression | Example | Feelings | Force | Health | Influence | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | System | Wisdom | Words | World |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Appearance | Art | Cause | Illusion | Reality | Wisdom | Art |

Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

Nothing would contribute more to make a man wise than to have always an enemy in his view.

Enemy | Man | Nothing | Wisdom | Wise |

Patrick Hannay

The wise man's tongue is ever in his heart; the fool's heart's in his tongue.

Heart | Man | Wisdom | Wise |

Hinton Rowan Helper

Slavery destroys, or vitiates, or pollutes, whatever it touches. No interest of society escapes the influence of its clinging curse.

Influence | Slavery | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Among the many advantages of experience, one of the most valuable is that we come to know the range of our own powers, and if we are wise we keep contentedly within them.

Experience | Wisdom | Wise |

William Harvey

Every affection of the mind that is attended with either pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation whose influence extends to the heart, and there induces change from the natural constitution, in the temperature, the pulse and the rest, which impairing all nutrition in its source and abating the powers at large, it is no wonder that various forms of incurable disease in the extremities and in the trunk are the consequence, inasmuch as in such circumstances the whole body labors under the effects of vitiated nutrition and want of native heat.

Agitation | Body | Cause | Change | Circumstances | Disease | Fear | Heart | Hope | Influence | Mind | Pain | Pleasure | Rest | Wisdom | Wonder |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.

Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |

Carlo Goldoni

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

Wisdom | Wise |

Thomas Hobbes

Such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned, yet they will hardly believe they may be many so wise as themselves.

Men | Nature | Will | Wisdom | Wise |