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

Victor Hugo

Happiness is a thing of gravity. It seeks for hearts of bronze, and carves itself there slowly; pleasure startles it away by tossing flowers to it. Joy's smile is much more close to tears than it is to laughter.

Joy | Laughter | Pleasure | Smile | Tears | Wisdom |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable. Talent, like other things, may lie fallow.

Wisdom |

Frederick Dan Huntington

If we do not know what the sorrow of penitence is, we have been living only on the surface of life - unmindful of its deep realities, unconscious of its grander glories.

Life | Life | Sorrow | Wisdom |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Some tears belong to us because we are unfortunate; others, because we are humane; many because we are mortal. But most are caused by our being unwise. It is these last only that of necessity produce more.

Mortal | Necessity | Tears | Wisdom |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears but cannot trace their source. Is the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world like music?

Instinct | Language | Memory | Music | Soul | Tears | Wisdom | World |

John Locke

Repentance is a hearty sorrow for our past misdeeds, and is a sincere resolution and endeavor, to the utmost of our power, to conform all our actions to the law of God. It does not consist in one single act of sorrow, but in doing works meet for repentance; in a sincere obedience to the law of Christ for the remainder of our lives.

God | Law | Obedience | Past | Power | Repentance | Resolution | Sorrow | Wisdom |

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 |

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 |

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 |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

Enough | Love | Memory | Tears | Wisdom |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.

Sorrow | Suffering | Wisdom |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life!

Life | Life | Man | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Ambroise de Lombez, Jean de La Peyrie, aka Brother Ambrose, Father Ambrose of Lombez the Enlightenment

By sadness you destroy the divine image in your soul. God is joy. All nature rejoices in him, and would you be sad? A true joy makes the heart fear God.

Destroy | Fear | God | Heart | Joy | Nature | Sadness | Soul | Wisdom | God |

Justus Möser

The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history.

Character | Circumstances | Defects | Faith | History | Knowledge | Land | Man | Manners | Nature | Position | Religion | Rights | Science | Wants | War | Wisdom |

John Neal

Opposition is what we want and must have, to be good for anything. Hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance.

Good | Opposition | Self | Self-reliance | Wisdom | Hardship |

Jane Porter

When Alexander had subdued the world, and wept that none were left to dispute his arms, his tears were an involuntary tribute to a monarchy that he knew not - man’s empire over himself.

Dispute | Man | Tears | Wisdom | World |

Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.

Man | Tears | Wisdom |