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

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford

It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.

Character | Love | Self | Self-love |

Margaret Young, born Margaret Youngblood

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Character | Money | Need | Order | People | Will |

Nathan Ackerman, fully Nathan Ward Ackerman

The image of self and the image of family are reciprocally interdependent.

Family | Interdependent | Self | Wisdom |

Horace Traubel

Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul...

Birth | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mistake | Possessions | Self | Soul | Old |

Simone Weil

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

Character | Life | Life | Order | People | Suffering |

John Stuart Blakie

Creation is the production of order. What a simple, but, at the same time comprehensive and pregnant principle is here! Plato could tell his disciples no ultimate truth of more pervading significance. Order is the law of all intelligible existence.

Existence | Law | Order | Time | Truth | Wisdom |

Harvey A. Blodgett

Thrift is not, as many suppose, a self repression. It is self expression, the demonstration of a will and ability to raise one's self to a higher plane of living. No depression was ever caused by people having too much money in reserve. No human being ever became a social drifter through the practice of sensible thrift.

Ability | Depression | Money | People | Practice | Reserve | Self | Thrift | Will | Wisdom |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Governments which suppress freedom of speech... act like children who shut their eyes in order not to be seen.

Children | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Order | Speech | Wisdom |

Thomas A. Buckner

To bring one's self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.

Battle | Energy | Mind | Self | Time | Wisdom | Work |

William J. Broad and Nicholas J. Wade

Finding facts in actuality is less rewarded than developing a theory of law that explains the facts, and herein lies an enticement. In making sense out of the unruly substance of nature, and in trying to get there first, a scientist is sometimes tempted to play fast and loose with the facts in order to make a theory look more compelling than it really is.

Law | Nature | Order | Play | Sense | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The miser is the man who starves himself, and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.

Man | Order | Wealth | Wisdom | Worship |

James Burgh

Before you think of retiring from the world, be sure you are fit for retirement; in order to which it is necessary that you have a mind so composed by prudence, reason, and religion, that it may bear being looked into; a turn to rural life, and a love of study.

Life | Life | Love | Mind | Order | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Religion | Retirement | Study | Wisdom | World | Think |

Nicholas Murray Butler

Time was invented by Almighty God in order to give ideas a chance.

Chance | God | Ideas | Order | Time | Wisdom | God |

William Ellery Channing

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

Ignorance | Order | Pleasure | Smile | Wisdom |

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, also known as Mulock, Mrs Craik, Mrs Craik, Miss Mulok, Miss Muloch, Miss Mulock

"Order is Heaven's first law," and a mind without order can by no possibility be either a healthy or a happy mind.

Happy | Heaven | Law | Mind | Order | Wisdom |

Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

Order | Wisdom | Work |