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

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

Lessons of wisdom have never such power over us as when they are wrought in to the heart through the groundwork of a story which engages the passions.

Character | Heart | Power | Story | Wisdom |

Tantra Tattva

In the root divine Wisdom is all-Brahman; in the stem she is an all-Illusion; in the flower she is all-World; and in the fruit, all-Liberation.

Character | Illusion | Wisdom | World |

Jeremy Taylor

It is a great point of wisdom to hide ignorance, as to discover knowledge. To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Character | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Wisdom |

Ludwig Tieck, fully Johann Ludwig Tieck

He who considers himself a paragon of wisdom is sure to commit some superlatively stupid act.

Character | Wisdom |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!

Beauty | Character | Excellence | Hate | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Passion | Pleasure | Valor | Valor | Wisdom | Youth |

Robert Southey

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge as stubborn temper to happiness.

Character | Knowledge | Little | Mind | Temper | Wisdom |

Hotzoas Chochmah Umassar

The wise man knows his wisdom is limited, but the fool thinks he knows everything.

Character | Man | Wisdom | Wise |

Apocrypha NULL

The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.

Business | Leisure | Little | Man | Opportunity | Wisdom | Wise | Business |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

Tomorrow comes to us untarnished by human living. No human eyes have seen it and no one can tell what it is going to be. The Chinese word for tomorrow (mingtien) means "bright day." There is the wisdom of sages and the rapture of the poets in that image.

Day | Means | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Walter H. Wheeler, Jr.

Our whole free dynamic society’s future depends upon a continued growth of our sense of responsibility and morality in direct proportion to the increase in our material wealth.

Character | Dynamic | Future | Growth | Morality | Responsibility | Sense | Society | Wealth |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.

Eternal | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.

Books | Character | Comfort | Destiny | Dignity | Ideas | Man | Mockery | Peace | Wisdom | Words | Work |

Mark Van Doren

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

Character | Experience | Wisdom | Words |