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

Sydney Smith

Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet: if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value.

Absurd | Beauty | Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Modesty | Sense | Teach | Will | Beauty | Happiness |

Avraham Yellin

When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes.

Character | Joy | Pain | Past | Present | Suffering |

Mary Antin, fully Mary Antin Grabau

It is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.

Past | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.

Future | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow

Religion is a hunger for beauty and love and glory. It is wonder and the mystery and majesty, passion and ecstasy. It is emotion as well as mind, feeling as well as knowing, the subjective as well as the objective. It is the heart soaring to heights the head alone will never know; the apprehension of meanings science alone will never find; the awareness of values ethics alone will never reveal. It is the human spirit yearning for, and finding, something infinitely greater than itself which it calls God.

Awareness | Beauty | Ecstasy | Ethics | Glory | God | Heart | Hunger | Knowing | Love | Mind | Mystery | Passion | Religion | Science | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Wonder | Beauty | Awareness |

Hugh Lawson White

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. the future is yet in your power.

Character | Future | Mind | Mistake | Past | Power | Reason | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and one with, and the future is uncertain.

Future | Life | Life | Man | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Mitsuo "Mits" Aoki

I encounter death not so much as a problem to be solved, nor a puzzle to be pieced together, but as a mystery to be experienced. Death, whatever its meaning and real nature, seems always to elude us. It is, always and finally, a mystery. And mystery refuses to be captured and be used. We do not capture it, but are captured by it. And being captured, we can be 'engaged' to death and allow it to reveal its depth and richness.

Death | Meaning | Mystery | Nature | Wisdom |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.

Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |

Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"

For there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely, by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience; since many have the arguments relating to what can be known, but because they lack experience they neglect the arguments, and neither avoid what is harmful nor follow what is good. For if a man who has never seen fire should prove by adequate reasoning that fire burns and injures things and destroys them, his mind would not be satisfied thereby, nor would he avoid fire, until he placed his hand or some combustible substance in the fire, so that he might prove by experience that which reasoning taught. But when he has had actual experience of combustion his mind is made certain and rests in the full light of truth. Therefore reasoning does not suffice, but experience does.

Doubt | Experience | Intuition | Knowledge | Light | Man | Mind | Neglect | Rest | Wisdom |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Bring the history of the past not as a gloomy memento mori, but as a friendly forget-me-not, whose lessons we may recall with love.

History | Love | Past | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

You define the present in an arbitrary manner as that which is, whereas the present is simply what is being made. Nothing is less than the present moment, if you understand by that the indivisible limit which divides the past from the future. When we think this present as going to be, it exists not yet; and when we think it as existing, it is already past.

Future | Nothing | Past | Present | Wisdom | Think | Understand |

Big Elk, aka Ontopanga NULL

Do not grieve. Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and what cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.

Death | Men | Nations | Past | People | Spirit | Will | Wisdom |

Joseph L. Baron

The dynamite of doubt is useful in wrecking old structures; but to build new buildings, we must have the dynamics of faith.

Doubt | Faith | Wisdom | Old |

Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

There is no more dangerous misconception than this which misconstrues the arms race as the cause rather than a symptom of the tensions and divisions which threaten nuclear war. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.

Cause | History | Past | Peace | Race | War | Wisdom |

Hugh Blair

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can it alter the cause or unravel the mystery of human events?

Anxiety | Anxiety | Cause | Events | Life | Life | Mind | Mystery | Wisdom | World | Blessed | Parent |