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

Samuel Butler

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

Old | Poem |

Simone Weil

Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

Authority | Beauty | Guidance | Little | Marriage | Words | Guidance | Beauty | Poem |

Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

A spiritual organization with a hierarchical structure can convey only the consciousness of estrangement, regardless of what teachings or deep inspirations are at its root.The structure itself reinforces the idea that some people are inherently more worthy than others.

Poem |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

Before gazing at the sun of humility we must let the light of meekness flow over us.

Faith | Present |

Stephanie Mills

Ecological restoration, allied with the creation of ecosystem-scale wilderness reserves, represents the main hope that the organic quality of wildness may someday be resurrected in human souls and in all life-places on planet Earth.

Poem |

Stefan Zweig

Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?

Means | Need | Public | Stigma |

Thomas Adam

When I see others astonishingly blind to their failings, I suppose it to be my own case, and should think that man my friend who helps to open my eyes.

Better | Devil | Esteem | Good | Meaning | Nature | Nothing | Present | Style |

Thomas Carlyle

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Life | Life | World | Poem |

Thomas Carlyle

Give me a man who sings at his work.

Beginning | Body | Earth | Eternity | Heaven | Little | Peace | Right | Sense | Soul | Thought | World | Poem | Thought |

Thomas Carlyle

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

Life | Life | World | Poem |

Thomas Carlyle

There is often more spiritual force in a proverb than in whole philosophical systems.

Life | Life | Poem |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.

Death | Love | Nothing | Reason | Will | Poem |

Ch'ien, fully T'ao Chien or Tao Qian, aka Tao Yuan-ming NULL

We had warm, wet weather all spring. Now, white autumn is clear and cold. Dew frozen, drifting mists gone, bottomless heavens open over this vast landscape of clarity, and mountains stretch away, their towering peaks an unearthly treasure of distance. These fragrant woodland chrysanthemums ablaze, green pines lining the clifftops: isn’t this the immaculate heart of beauty, this frost-deepened austerity? Sipping wine, I think of recluse masters. A century away, I nurture your secrets. Your true nature eludes me here, but taken by quiet, I can linger this exquisite moon out to the end.

Need | Poem |

Westminster Shorter Catechism, aka Shorter Catechism or Westminster Shorter Catechism of the Presbyterian NULL

The conclusion of the Lord's prayer (which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen) teacheth us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him. And, in testimony of our desire, and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen.

W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson

The true gain is always in the struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a far higher question than what we get.

Contention | Discipline | Doctrine | Genius | Indolence | Man | Wisdom | Poem |

William Collins

Poetry is the history of the human heart, and it continues to record the history of human emotion, whether it's celebration or grief or whatever it may be.

Means | Poem |

William Collins

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide No sedge-crown'd sister now attend, Now waft me from the green hill's side Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!

Torture | Poem |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

Alms | Beauty | Church | Despise | Earth | Hate | Indulgence | Labor | Love | Man | Nothing | Patience | Troubles | Will | Woman | Words | Beauty | Poem |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

O western orb sailing the heaven, now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked, as I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,

Life | Life | Words | Poem |