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

Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

In a word, the opinions of learned authors, though their bodily forms are absent, gain strength as time goes on, and, when taking part in councils and discussions, have greater weight than those of any living men.

Vision | Think |

Wallace Stevens

The president has apples on the table and barefoot servants round him, who adjust the curtains to a metaphysical and the banners of the nation flutter, burst on the flag-poles in a red-blue dazzle, whack at the halyards.

Desire | Vision |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist, lawyers

Absolute | Dreams | Earth | Good | Knowledge | Man | Order | Search | Vision | Happiness |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?

God | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Opinion | Vision | World | God |

Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.

Better | Thought | Vision | Wise | Thought |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful.

Control | Father | Heaven | Impulse | Love | Tears | Vision | Work |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver-grey in the air. It was the time between the lights when colors undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in windowpanes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish ... has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Vision | World |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The Lord who had come to renew society, who lay like a coverlet, a snow blanket smitten only by the sun, forever unwasted, suffering forever, the scapegoat, the eternal sufferer.

Man | Vision |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

By Your Will, enticed by the illusion of emotional attachment, the people are asleep; they do not wake up.

Lord | Vision | Blessed |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

Vision |

Vance Havner

The word Christian ends with IAN and that stands for I Am Nothing. We are zeroes until we relate to him.

Enough | Vision |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy.

Chance | Control | Duty | Enough | Evil | Haste | Hurry | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Policy | Sound | Thought | Vision | Thought |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

Don't be deceived. You must face Destiny. Preparation is only possible now. Don't be fooled by your sunny skies. When the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon your house, your private dwelling, your own family, your own fair hopes, your own strong muscles, your own body, your own soul itself, then it is well-nigh too late to build a house. You can only go inside what house you have and pray that it is founded upon the Rock. Be not deceived by distance in time or space, or the false security of a bank account and an automobile and good health and willing hands to work. Thousands, perhaps millions as good as you have had all these things and are perishing in body and, worse still, in soul today.

Consciousness | Contrast | Glory | God | Life | Life | Listening | Mistake | Obedience | People | Struggle | Vision | Will | Wills | God |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

For God Himself works in our souls, in the deepest depths, taking increasing control as we are progressively willing to be prepared for His wonder.

God | Humility | Love | Men | Obedience | Prayer | Pride | Vision | Will | World | God |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

Earth | Liberty | Nations | Respect | Vision | Wealth | Respect | Leadership |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

Do not mistake me. Our interest just now is in the life of complete obedience to God, not in amazing revelations of His glory graciously granted only to some. Yet the amazing experiences of the mystics leave a permanent residue, a God-subdued, a God-possessed will. States of consciousness are fluctuating. The vision fades. But holy and listening and alert obedience remains, as the core and kernel of a God-intoxicated life, as the abiding pattern of sober, workaday living. And some are led into the state of complete obedience by this well-nigh passive route, wherein God alone seems to be the actor and we seem to be wholly acted upon. And our wills are melted and dissolved and made pliant, being firmly fixed in Him, and He wills in us. But in contrast to this passive route to complete obedience most people must follow what Jean-Nicholas Grou calls the active way, wherein we must struggle and, like Jacob of old, wrestle with the angel until the morning dawns, the active way wherein the will must be subjected bit by bit, piecemeal and progressively, to the divine Will.

Day | Earth | Eternal | God | Heaven | History | Insight | Life | Life | Little | Love | Mind | Obedience | Openness | Prayer | Present | Psychology | Reality | Sacred | Submission | Vision | Will | Words | Work | God |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They’re playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They’re just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It’s an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That’s what we’re up against in Iraq. We’re up against a suicide supply chain.

Vision |

Thucydides NULL

The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.

Danger | Glory | Vision | Danger |

Tom Brown, Jr.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of the m ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

Care | Choice | Heart | Need | Vision | Will |