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

Mary Antin, fully Mary Antin Grabau

It is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.

Past | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.

Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Hugh Lawson White

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. the future is yet in your power.

Character | Future | Mind | Mistake | Past | Power | Reason | Wisdom |

Edwin Percy Whipple

In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else, that is good, is its own reward.

Character | Glory | Good | Joy | Labor | Reward |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and one with, and the future is uncertain.

Future | Life | Life | Man | Past | Present | Wisdom |

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

At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.

Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Bring the history of the past not as a gloomy memento mori, but as a friendly forget-me-not, whose lessons we may recall with love.

History | Love | Past | Wisdom |

George Bancroft

Ennui is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying the desire.

Desire | Ennui | Means | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present as going to be, it exists not yet; and when we think it as existing, it is already past.

Future | Nothing | Past | Present | Wisdom | Think | Understand |

Big Elk, aka Ontopanga NULL

Do not grieve. Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and what cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.

Death | Men | Nations | Past | People | Spirit | Will | Wisdom |

Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

There is no more dangerous misconception than this which misconstrues the arms race as the cause rather than a symptom of the tensions and divisions which threaten nuclear war. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.

Cause | History | Past | Peace | Race | War | Wisdom |

Charlotte Joko Beck

Our life is always absolute: that’s all there is. The truth is not somewhere else. But we have minds that are trying to burn the past or the future. The living present - Buddhahood - is rarely encountered.

Absolute | Future | Life | Life | Past | Present | Truth | Wisdom |

R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

To teach Zen means to unteach; to see life steadily and see it whole, the answer not being divided from the question; no parrying, dodging, countering, solving, changing the words; an activity which is a physical and spiritual unity with All-Activity.

Life | Life | Means | Question | Teach | Unity | Wisdom | Words | Zen |

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 |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Active natures are rarely melancholy. Activity and sadness are incompatible.

Melancholy | Sadness | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us; they rejoice in the present.

Children | Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Children | Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |