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

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

Age | History | Knowing | Men | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Richard Cecil

A contemplative life has more the appearance of a life of piety than any other; but it is the divine plan to bring faith into activity and exercise.

Appearance | Faith | Life | Life | Piety | Plan | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

Books | God | Life | Life | Past | Wisdom |

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

What is past is past. There is a future left to all men who have the virtue to repent, and the energy to atone.

Energy | Future | Men | Past | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Frank Gelett Burgess

If you wish to be positive, which means youthful, never speak of the past any more than you can help.

Means | Past | Wisdom |

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

There is one way of attaining what we may term, if not utter, at least mortal happiness; it is by a sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others.

Mortal | Wisdom | Happiness |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.

Future | Man | Mind | Past | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

Civilization | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Benedetto Croce

We are products of the past and we live immersed in the past, which encompasses us.

Past | Wisdom |

John Dewey

Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.

Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |

Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla

One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be.

Better | Future | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Karl Deutsch, fully Karl Wolfgang Deutsch

The single greatest power in the world today is the power to change... The most recklessly irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today.

Change | Conservatism | Future | Past | Policy | Power | Wisdom | World |

Charles W. Eliot

Nobody has any right to find life uninteresting or unrewarded who sees within the sphere of his own activity a wrong he can help to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope to overcome.

Evil | Hope | Life | Life | Right | Wisdom | Wrong |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one ;unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?

Courage | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Music | Past | Present | Resignation | Self | Sorrow | Soul | Sympathy | Tenderness | Weakness | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receives.

Evidence | Future | Past | Regret | Right | Wisdom | World | Wrong |

Euripedes NULL

Sweet is the memory of past labor.

Labor | Memory | Past | Wisdom |