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

Robert Collier

People blame their environment. There is one thing to blame - and only one -- themselves.

Blame | People | Wisdom |

Robert Collyer

God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best.

Excellence | God | Good | Impulse | Life | Life | Longing | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Excellence |

Philip Conley, fully Philip Mallory "Phil" Conley

Your imagination has much to do with your life. It pictures beauty, success, desired results. One the other hand, it brings into focus ugliness, distress, and failure. It is for you to decide how you want your imagination to serve you.

Beauty | Distress | Failure | Focus | Imagination | Life | Life | Success | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities.

Consideration | Means | Men | Qualities | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ration; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.

Belief | Death | Fear | Good | Happy | Ignorance | Imagination | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Organic | Struggle | War | Wisdom |

Joseph Collins

A prudent person profits from personal experience, a wise one from the experience of others.

Experience | Wisdom | Wise |

Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné

Free inquiry, if restrained within due bounds, and applied to proper subjects, is a most important privilege of the human mind; and if well conducted, is one of the greatest friends to truth. But when reason knows neither its office nor its limits, and when employed on subjects foreign to its jurisdiction, it then becomes a privilege dangerous to be exercised.

Important | Inquiry | Mind | Office | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | Friends | Privilege |

Jeremy Collier

Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.

Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |

John Dewey

I believe that... education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living... all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race... Every thinker puts one portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

Consciousness | Education | Future | Individual | Peril | Race | Wisdom | World |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |

Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla

One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be.

Better | Future | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Daisie Adelle Davis

Thousands upon thousands of persons have studied disease. Almost no one has studied health.

Disease | Health | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

The one way to get thin is to reestablish a purpose in life... Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.

Disease | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Theresa L. Crenshaw, fully Dr. Theresa Larsen Crenshaw

You’re not just sleeping with one person, you’re sleeping with everyone they ever slept with.

Wisdom |

W. Macneile Dixon, fully William Macneile Dixon

To strip the human being, for example, of all his attributes save his logical or calculating powers is an unwarrantable mutilation. Nature made him what he is. You cannot pick and choose. Nature is asserting herself in him, and you must take account not of one or two, but of all her assertions.

Example | Nature | Wisdom |

Evelyn Mills Duvall

Parents represent the last stand of the amateur. Every other trade and profession has developed standards, has required study and practice and licensing before releasing the students into his work. Only one profession remains untutored and untrained -- the bearing and rearing of our children.

Children | Parents | Practice | Study | Wisdom | Work |

Albert Einstein

Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

Education | Wisdom |