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

Claude Levi-Strauss

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

Character | Language | Means | Music | Wisdom |

William Matthews

Knowledge is acquired by study and observation, but wisdom cometh by opportunity of leisure; the ripest thought comes from the mind which is not always on the stretch, but fed, at times, by a wise passiveness.

Knowledge | Leisure | Mind | Observation | Opportunity | Study | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Thought |

Israel Salanter Lipkin

When I carried the thought in my heart, it uplifted me; and when I expressed it , it lost its influence.

Heart | Influence | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

John Locke

The visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of creation that a rational creature who will but seriously reflect on them cannot miss the discovery of a deity.

Discovery | Power | Will | Wisdom | Discovery |

Marchioness de Spadara

If there be aught surpassing human deed or word or thought it is a mother’s love!

Love | Mother | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

William Matthews

Solitary reading will enable a man to stuff himself with information, but without conversation, his mind will become like a pond without an outlet - a mass of unhealthy stagnature. It is not enough to harvest knowledge by study; the wind of talk must winnow it, and blow away the chaff; then will the clear, bright grains of wisdom be garnered, for our own use or that of others.

Conversation | Enough | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Reading | Study | Will | Wisdom |

James Russell Lowell

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of the saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

Ability | Imagination | Means | Space | Thought | Time | Wisdom | World | Thought |

Douglas MacArthur

And in the end, through the long ages of our quest for light, it will be found that truth is still mightier than the sword. For out of the welter of human carnage and human sorrow and human weal the indestructible thing that will always live is a sound idea.

Light | Sorrow | Sound | Truth | Will | Wisdom |

Henry Edward Manning

Of the wisdom that is far above; and that Christian charity ought never to be sacrificed even for the promotion of evangelical truth.

Charity | Truth | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Music | Nothing | Wisdom | Understand |

John Locke

The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Display | Knowledge | Mankind | Nature | Principles | Religion | Revelation | Wisdom |

Robert S. MacArthur

Men seldom die of hard work; activity is God's medicine. The highest genius is willingness and ability to do hard work. Any other conception of genius makes it a doubtful, if not a dangerous possession.

Ability | Genius | God | Men | Wisdom | Work |

Charles Mackay

The old thoughts never die. Immortal dreams outlive their dreamers and are our for aye; no thought once form’d and utter’d can expire.

Dreams | Thought | Wisdom | Old | Thought |

Daniel March

Proverbs are in the world of thought what gold coin is in the world of business - great value in small compass, and equally current among all people. Sometimes the proverb may be false, the coin counterfeit, but in both cases the false proves the value of the true.

Business | Gold | People | Proverbs | Thought | Wisdom | World | Business | Thought | Value |

Masonic Manual NULL

O ye princes and rulers, how exceeding strong is wine! It causeth all men to err that drink it; it maketh the mind of the king and the beggar to be all one, of the bondsman and the freeman, of the poor man and of the rich; it turneth also every thought into jollity and mirth, so that a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt; it changeth and elevateth the spirits and enliventh the heavy hearts of the miserable; it maketh a man forget his brethren, and draw his sword against his best friends.

Debt | Man | Men | Mind | Mirth | Sorrow | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Walter Lippmann

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power; run against the grain of a nation's genius and see where you get with your laws.

Genius | Man | Power | Wisdom |

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 |