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

Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

Circumstances | Doubt | Good | Integrity |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

Circumstances | Contempt | Love |

Thomas Jefferson

To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.

Circumstances | Esteem | Future | Individual | Opinion | Past | Present | Question | Will |

Thomas Merton

May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. It is more than silence.

Circumstances | Individual | Man | Men | Reason | Waste |

Thomas Paine

The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?

Change | Circumstances | Government | Inconvenient | Men | Right | Thought | World | Wrong | Government | Thought |

Thomas Paine

The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world is a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence. It is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly allied to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for prudence furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served, as is the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish the embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for he authorized it to be made known to the French Government, as a confidential matter (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here state), he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr. Jay's mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr. Jay's authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of the western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in American vessels.

Cause | Circumstances | Man | Mankind | Nature | Power | Principles | Rights | War | Will |

Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more important, of who we are, and who we might become. They unlock our energies, our imaginations, and our minds. Effective teachers pose compelling questions, explain options, teach us to reason, suggest possible directions, and urge us on. The best teachers, like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives.

Associates | Circumstances | Deeds | Important | Mission | Past | People | Trust | Vision | Deeds | Leader | Understand |

William Cowper

For 'tis a truth well known to most, that whatsoever thing is lost, we seek it, ere it comes to light, in every cranny but the right.

Circumstances | Conduct | Enough | Looks | Man | Time | Truth | World | Old |

Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.

Character | Children | Circumstances | Day | Ego | Husband | Life | Life | Mind | Necessity | Time |

Will and Ariel Durant

In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.

Care | Circumstances | Time | Will | Old |

Wilhelm Röepke

A healthy society, firmly resting on its own founda­tion, possesses a genuine `structure' with many interme­diate stages; it exhibits a necessarily `hierarchi­cal' composition...where each individual has the good fortune of knowing his position. Whereas such a society is based on the grouping functions of genuine communi­ties filled with the spirit of human fellowship (such as the neighbourhood, the family, the parish, the Church, the occupation), society has during the last hundred years moved further and further away from such an ideal and has disintegrated into a mass of abstract individuals who are solitary and isolated as human beings, but packed tightly like termites in their role of social functionaries.

Business | Circumstances | Competition | Ethics | Freedom | Law | Means | Policy | Business |

Walter Bagehot

The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

Circumstances | Man | Men |

Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

The ideal examples of poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one single effect.

Circumstances | Man | Philosophy |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Authentic empowerment is the knowing that you are on purpose, doing God's work, peacefully and harmoniously.

Absence | Circumstances |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

Ability | Circumstances | Fulfillment | Greatness |

Walker Percy

Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?

Better | Circumstances | Good | Light | Man | People | Thought | Will | Thought |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Do everything to demonstrate, and in the most emphatic manner, our sympathy for the Moslems, their autonomy, independence, etc.

Circumstances | Government | Government |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers (Communist) and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).

Circumstances | Leadership |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Actually, observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained,- Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.

Age | Circumstances | Virginity |