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

Michael Murphy

[There are] four destructive effects of religious and therapeutic disciplines: 1) A practice can reinforce limiting traits, preventing their removal or transformation. 2) A practice can support limiting beliefs, giving them greater power in the life of an individual or culture. 3) A practice can subvert balanced growth by emphasizing some virtues at the expense of others. 4) A practice can limit integral development when it focuses on partial though authentic experience of superordinary reality.

Culture | Experience | Giving | Growth | Individual | Life | Life | Power | Practice | Reality | Wisdom |

William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa

Old age brings us to know the value of the blessings which we have enjoyed, and it brings us also to a very thankful perception of those which yet remain. Is a man advanced in life? The ease of a single day, the rest of a single night, are gifts which may be subjects of gratitude to God.

Age | Blessings | Day | God | Gratitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Perception | Rest | Wisdom | Value |

Nikita Ivanovich Panin

In youth the days are short and the years are long; in old age the years are short and the days long.

Age | Old age | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Old |

Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti NULL

Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord. Violence has ever achieved only destruction, not construction; the kindling of passions, not their pacification; the accumulation of hate and destruction, not the reconciliation of the contending parties; and it has reduced men and parties to the difficult task of building slowly after sad experience on the ruins of discord.

Evolution | Experience | Hate | Justice | Men | Reconciliation | Revolution | Salvation | Wisdom |

Thomas W. Palmer

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth; instead of its introducing dismal and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Age | Better | Eternal | Melancholy | Old age | Reward | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth | Old |

Thomas Paine

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

Age | Grave | Presumption | Wisdom |

Donald Culross Peattie

Whatever life is (and nobody can define it) it is something forever changing shape, fleeting, escaping us into death. Life is indeed the only thing that can die, and it begins to die as soon as it is born, and never ceases dying. Each of us is constantly experiencing cellular death. For the renewal of our tissues means a corresponding death of them, so that death and rebirth become, biologically, right and left hand of the same thing. All growing is at the same time a dying away from that which lived yesterday.

Death | Life | Life | Means | Right | Time | Wisdom |

Seiji Ozawa

I think that there is a line that begins before our life here, intersects it and continues after we exist. Chance certainly plays a part in our lives, but it is chance with a purpose.

Chance | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | Think |

Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

I seek the Presidency not because it offers me a change to be somebody but because it offers a chance to do something.

Chance | Change | Wisdom |

William Osler, fully Sir William Osler

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

Age | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Francis Quarles

Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquire thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.

Chance | Conscience | Looks | Public | Study | Will | Wisdom |

Roscoe Pound, fully Nathan Roscoe Pound

Law is experience developed by reason and applied continually to further experience.

Experience | Law | Reason | Wisdom |

Auguste Rodin, fully François-Auguste-René Rodin

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Experience | Nothing | Time | Waste | Wisdom |

Francis Quarles

If thou expect death as a friend, prepare to entertain it; if thou expect death as an enemy, prepare to overcome it; death has no advantage, but when it comes a stranger.

Death | Enemy | Friend | Wisdom |

Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard

People always confuse the man and the artist because chance has united them in the same body.

Body | Chance | Man | People | Wisdom |