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

Ancrene Wisse, aka Ancrene Riwle NULL

You ought to say fewer fixed prayers so that you may do more reading. Reading is good prayer. Reading teaches us how to pray, and what to pray for, and then prayer achieves it. In the course of reading, when the heart is pleased, there arises a spirit of devotion which is worth many prayers.

Devotion | Good | Heart | Prayer | Reading | Spirit | Worth |

Phil Batchelor

The time we spend on earth is but one tick of the eternal clock in an unending eternity. We are here in mortality for a brief moment and then on to the next stage of our development. It does not matter how many trials we have in life, just how we handle them. It does not matter how long we live, just how we live. How can we appreciate eternal good health if we have never experienced sickness, pain, or disease? How can we appreciate eternal joy if we have never experienced disappointment, hardship, or failure? How can we appreciate living forever if we have never known death?

Death | Disease | Earth | Eternal | Eternity | Failure | Good | Health | Joy | Life | Life | Pain | Time | Trials |

Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself; inasmuch as the perfection of all things are so many similitudes of the divine essence.

Desire | God | Perfection | God |

Saint Bonaventure, born John of Fidanza Bonaventure

If there be any man who is not enlightened by this sublime magnificence of created things, he is blind. If there be any man who is not aroused by the clamor of nature, he is deaf. If there be any one who, seeing all these works of God, does not praise him, he is dumb; if there be any one who, from so many signs, cannot perceive the First Principle, that man is foolish.

God | Man | Nature | Praise |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Many have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great.

Fortune | Little | Wisdom |

Greta Woodrew, Pseud. for Greta Andron Smolowe

Each of us carries about a great many 'truths' with which we are not only comfortable but which we consider sacrosanct. These 'truisms' can be things we learned at our parent's knee... idealities we have nurtured over the years... or prejudices we have hugged to ourselves over a period of time. More often than not, our personal convictions take precedence over antithetical arguments. This is why most people are not good listeners. They hear another person's thesis but simultaneously they form an argument to back their own belief. The result is that they really aren't listening. They are simply hearing. And they mentally counter what it is they choose to hear.

Argument | Belief | Convictions | Good | Listening | People | Time | Truisms | Wisdom |

Edward Young

How many sleep who keep the world awake!

Wisdom | World |

Sven Birkerts

The reality of life is that your perceptions -- right or wrong -- influence everything else you do. When you get a proper perspective of your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other things fall into place.

Influence | Life | Life | Reality | Right | Wrong |

Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

How great a judgment, O rich man, do you draw down upon yourself! The people go hungry, and you close your granaries; the people weep, and you turn your finger-ring about. Unhappy man, who has the power but not the will to save so many souls from death.

Death | Judgment | Man | People | Power | Will |

Mary Catherwood, fully Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.

Speech | Old |

Philip Caldwell

The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the wins and the losses. Successes have many fathers, failures have none.

Credit | Important |

S. Truett Cathy

Truett’s Rules: (1) It’s better to demonstrate than to dictate. If you set the example, you won’t need to set so many rules. (2) Fifty percent of the battle ends when you make up your mind.

Battle | Better | Ends | Example | Mind | Need |

Gregg Braden

The possibilities of our future are actually determined by collective choices in the present. The evidence simply states that the choice of many people, focused in a specific manner, has a direct and measurable effect on our quality of life. Quantum physics suggests that by redirecting our focus – where we place our attention – we bring a new course of events into focus while at the same time releasing an existing course of events that may no longer serve us.

Attention | Choice | Events | Evidence | Focus | Future | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |

Coco Chanel

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.

Leo Busacaglia

Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.

Life | Life | Love | Paradise | Passion |

Seán Bán Breathnach, aka SBB

Authentic success is knowing how simply abundant your life is exactly as it is today. Authentic success is being so grateful for the many blessings bestowed on you. Authentic success is living each day with a heart overflowing.

Blessings | Day | Heart | Knowing | Life | Life | Success |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

The world is the book where eternal Wisdom wrote its own ideas, and the living temple where, depicting its own acts and likeness, it decorated the height and the depth with living statues; so that every spirit, to guard against profanity, should read and contemplate here art and government, and each should say: “I fill the universe, seeing God in all things.” But we, souls bound to books and dead temples, copied with many mistakes from the living, place these things before such instruction. O ills, quarrels, ignorance, labors, pains, make us aware of our falling away: O let us, in God’s name, return to the original.

Art | Books | Eternal | God | Government | Ideas | Ignorance | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World | Art | God |