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

Honoré de Balzac

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

Character | Eternal | Ideals | Man | World | Truths |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

A rational nature admits of nothing but what is serviceable to the rest of mankind.

Character | Mankind | Nature | Nothing | Rest |

John Bartlett

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

Character | Custom | Despot | Feelings | Manners | World |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

There is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment.

Change | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Bruce Bliven

Perhaps the most important lesson the world has learned in the past fifty years is that it is not true that "human nature is unchangeable."

Character | Human nature | Important | Lesson | Nature | Past | World |

Phillips Brooks

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good, without the world being the better for it, without somebody being helped an comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Better | Character | Existence | Good | Man | Woman | World |

Arthur Brisbane

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains.

Character | Good | Power | Regret | Time |

Hugh Blair

Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare.

Accomplishment | Age | Appearance | Artifice | Character | Contempt | Falsehood | Future | Learning | Old age | Perfidy | Power | Shame | Sincerity | Youth | Youth | Old |

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

If you want to earn more - learn more. If you want to get more out of the world you must put more into the world. For, after all, men will get no more out of life than they put into it.

Character | Life | Life | Men | Will | World | Learn |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears - anxieties for ills that never happen - a greater part of the other half.

Character | Poverty | World |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster.

Absolute | Change | Character | Excitement | Human nature | Nature | Novelty | Resolution | Surrender | War |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Character | Freedom | Hope | Power | Understand |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Eternal | God | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | God | Happiness |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

It is one thing to be carried through an endless life, another thing to embrace the whole presence of an endless life together, which is manifestly proper to the divine Mind. The temporal world seems to emulate in part that which it cannot fully obtain or express, tying itself to whatever presence there is in this exiguous and fleeting moment - a presence which, since it carries a certain image of that abiding Presence, gives to whatever may partake of it the quality of seeming to have being. But because it could not stay, it undertook an infinite journey of time; and so it came to pass that, by going, it continued that life, whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Mind | Time | World |

William Blake

The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation, of vegetation, is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the permanent realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.

Body | Character | Death | Eternal | Eternity | Imagination | Nature | World |