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

Frederick K. Stamm

When no new thoughts fill the mind - when no horizons beckon - when life is in the past, not in the future - you are on the way to uselessness.

Character | Future | Life | Life | Mind | Past |

Avraham Yellin

When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes.

Character | Joy | Pain | Past | Present | Suffering |

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 |

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

If we conceive of some point of time which cannot be divided into even the minutes parts of moments, that is the only point that can be called present: and that point flees at such lightning speed from being future to being past, that it has no extent of duration at all.

Future | Past | Present | Time | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

Educate your children of self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes from society.

Character | Children | Control | Evil | Future | Habit | Passion | Prejudice | Self | Self-control | Society | Will |

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 |

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 |

Yukteswar, fully Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, born Priyanath Karar NULL

Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.

Character | Conduct | Effort | Future | Man | Will |

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 |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Future | Present | Reason | Weapons | Will | Wisdom |

John Jacob Abel

Greater even than the greatest discovery is to keep open the way to future discovery.

Discovery | Future | Wisdom | Discovery |

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 |

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 |