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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Day | Truth | Will | Wisdom |

Sara Jordan, fully Sara Claudia Murray Jordan

Every day give yourself a good mental shampoo.

Day | Good | Wisdom |

Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering

Research... is nothing but a state of mind - a friendly, welcoming attitude toward change; going out to look for a change instead of waiting for it to come. Research, for practical men, is an effort to do things better.

Better | Change | Effort | Men | Mind | Nothing | Research | Waiting | Wisdom |

Lame Deer, fully John Fire Lame Deer, aka The Old Man, born Tȟáȟča Hušté

Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don’t use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don’t use the knowledge of the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere - a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big, empty hole which they find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It’s a quick comfortable superhighway, but I know where it leads to. I’ve seen it. I’ve been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it.

Dreams | Knowledge | Spirit | Vision | Waiting | Wisdom | Think |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.

Brotherhood | Character | Children | Choice | Creed | Day | Existence | Freedom | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Meaning | Men | Non-existence | Oppression | People | Self | Tomorrow | Will | Wisdom | Truths |

Charles Kingsley

What right has any free, reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong?

Day | Earth | Man | Murder | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Wrong | Murder |

Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

Day | Life | Life | Wisdom | Learn |

Nicolas Le Letourneux

Be avaricious of time; do not give any moment without receiving it in value; only allow hours to go from you with as much regret as you give to your gold; do not allow a single day to pass without increasing the treasure of your knowledge and virtue.

Day | Gold | Knowledge | Regret | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Abbott Elliot Kittredge

My friend, there will come one day to you a Messenger, whom you cannot treat with contempt. He will say, “Come with me;” and all your pleas of business cares and earthly loves will be of no avail. When his cold hand touches yours, the key of the counting-room will drop forever, and he will lead you away from all your investments, your speculations, your bank-notes and real estate, and with him you will pass into eternity, up to the bar of God. You will not be too busy to die.

Business | Contempt | Day | Eternity | Friend | God | Will | Wisdom | Business |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a caress, and only waiting for the signal.

Waiting | Wisdom |

Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

Neither dread your last day nor desire it.

Day | Desire | Dread | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

Day | Future | Time | Wisdom |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

Better | Day | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Guglielmo Marconi

Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time.

Day | Humanity | Space | Struggle | Time | Wisdom |

Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man, nor has one passed away which he is unwilling to remember: the period of his life seems prolonged by his good acts; and we may be said to live twice, when we can reflect with pleasure on the days that are gone.

Cause | Day | Good | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Samuel Joseph May

A true philosopher makes death his common practice, while he lives, and every day by contemplation strives to separate the soul, far as he can, from off the body.

Body | Contemplation | Day | Death | Practice | Soul | Wisdom | Contemplation |