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

Janet Kauffman

If we care about the land, it will be necessary to redefine whole economies, not just the farm economy. A complex, solid economy could certainly grow around a policy of cooperation with natural environments. Why haven’t we proposed such policies - on a grand a scale as national defense - when our own species is at stake?

Care | Cooperation | Defense | Land | Policy | Will | Wisdom |

William James

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities. Prune his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.

Excess | Extravagance | Man | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail.

Defense | Diplomacy | Wisdom |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There is a great difference between still believing something and believing it again.

Wisdom |

Jacques Maritain

This divination of the spiritual in the things of sense, and which expresses itself I the things of sense, is precisely what we call Poetry. Metaphysics too pursues a spiritual prey, but in a very different formal object. Whereas metaphysics stands in the line of knowledge and of the contemplation of truth, poetry stands in the line of making and of the delight procured by beauty. The difference is an all-important one, and one that it would be harmful to disregard. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened through intelligence... Metaphysics gives chase to essences and definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by the way, and any reflection of an invisible order. Metaphysics isolates mystery in order to know it; poetry, thanks to the balances it constructs, handles and utilizes mystery as an unknown force.

Abstract | Beauty | Contemplation | Existence | Force | Important | Intelligence | Knowledge | Metaphysics | Mystery | Object | Order | Poetry | Reflection | Sense | Truth | Wisdom | Contemplation |

John Locke

Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please... Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.

Consideration | Evil | Good | Joy | Mind | Power | Present | Sense | Sorrow | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.

Ignorance | Wisdom |

Francis Cassette Monfort

The morality of the Bible is, after all, the safety of society.

Bible | Morality | Society | Wisdom | Bible |

Margaret E. Mulac

Time is a man's most precious possession - his most precious commodity. To take a man's time, is to take a portion of his life. To give a man some of your time, is to give him a portion of yours.

Life | Life | Man | Time | Wisdom |

Jean Mary Morman

Art is the difference between seeing and just identifying.

Art | Wisdom |

Peter Minard

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws form the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary. The exodus from slavery toward the possession of the Kingdom.

Absence | Noise | Order | Peace | Silence | Slavery | Wisdom |

William Penn

The difference between passion and love is that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, passion wastes, by enjoyment; and the reason is that one springs from a union of souls, and other from a union of sense.

Enjoyment | Love | Passion | Reason | Sense | Wisdom |

William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa

In strictness of language there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always supposing action and action directed by it.

Action | Knowledge | Language | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Luxury... corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.

Luxury | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Two kinds of people: ... those who think and those who don't; the difference comes almost entirely from education.

Education | People | Wisdom | Think |