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

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more that they can choose their birthplace, or their father or mother.

Father | Man | Mother | Wisdom | Woman |

John Florio

Night is the mother of thoughts.

Mother | Wisdom |

William Farquhar

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Invention | Mother | Necessity | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire.

Desire | Excellence | Father | God | Heart | Love | Need | Prayer | Wisdom | Words | Excellence | God |

Lowell Fillmore

Every individual is a king in the castle of his own mind. As king of his thoughts he can think those thought which will make him an unhappy and fearful monarch, or he can make his reign joyous and harmonious by listening to the Father within himself before making decisions.

Father | Individual | Listening | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Think | Thought |

Pope Leo I, aka Pope Leo The Great, Pope Saint Leo I NULL

Peace is the first thing the angels sang. Peace is the mark of the sons of God. Peace is the nurse of love. Peace is the mother of unity. Peace is the rest of blessed souls. Peace is the dwelling place of eternity.

Angels | Eternity | God | Love | Mother | Peace | Rest | Unity | Wisdom | Blessed |

Ellen Goodman

The figures prove that the absolute easiest way to be poor is to be born out of wedlock to a young woman. If you need a statistic to memorize, try this one: 92.8 percent of all children in black, single female-headed families where the mother is under thirty and did not complete high school, are in poverty.

Absolute | Children | Mother | Need | Poverty | Wisdom | Woman |

Frederick Dan Huntington

Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benediction on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety.

Charity | Devotion | Faith | Father | God | Love | Men | Piety | Suffering | Wisdom | Work | God |

Washington Irving

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.

Feelings | Fidelity | Mother | Society | Strength | Truth | Wisdom | Child |

Thomas Hobbes

Leisure is the mother of philosophy... The source of every crime , is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions... And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Crime | Error | Force | Leisure | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Philosophy | Understanding | Wisdom |

Lady Hervey, fully Lady Victoria Frederica Isabella Hervey

A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, or understand Horace; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions, whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just and benevolent.

Father | Wisdom | Think | Understand |

Richard Hooker

Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is thy bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things do her homage, the very least as feeling her care; and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

Angels | Care | God | Harmony | Joy | Law | Men | Mother | Peace | Power | Wisdom | World |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers. But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.

Children | Control | Endurance | Father | Mother | Patience | Self | Self-control | Wisdom | Wonder | Instruction |

William Dean Howells

A man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let her know that he sees it.

Man | Mother | Wisdom |

Theodore M. Hesburgh, fully Theodore Martin Hesburgh

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Children | Father | Important | Love | Mother | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is mere childishness to expect men to believe as their fathers did; that is, if they have any minds of their own. The world is a whole generation older and wiser than when the father was of his son's age.

Age | Father | Men | Wisdom | World |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

I know that there is one God in heaven, the Father of all humanity, and heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky, which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in God, and unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom. Whatever it is broken, wherever a shadow is cast upon the sunny rays of the sun of liberty, there is always danger of free principles everywhere in the world.

Danger | Father | Freedom | God | Heaven | Humanity | Liberty | Light | Principles | Unity | Wisdom | World | Danger | God |

Abraham Lincoln

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.

Father | Love | Teach | Wisdom | Work |