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

W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace

In the end we shall have to say that there is no solution of an intellectual kind and that it is part of the general mystical paradox that the mystical revelation transcends the intellect.

Mystical | Paradox | Revelation | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect meditation, so are our prayers imperfect, meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.

Duty | Intention | Language | Meditation | Neglect | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Wisdom |

Samuel Smiles

There are words that strike even harder than blows.

Wisdom | Words |

Sydney Smith

The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas that it is very deservedly driven out of good company.

Good | Ideas | Language | Wisdom | Wit |

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

O guard thy roving thoughts with jealous care, for speech is but the dialplate of thought; and every fool reads plainly in thy words what is the hour of thy thought.

Care | Speech | Thought | Wisdom | Words |

Logan Pearsall Smith

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half-jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. 'Yes,' he replied, ' there is a meaning, at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.'

Death | Friend | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Wisdom | Words |

John Randolph Stidman

It is the little things in life that are the sublime things. It is the minor parts of the great drama which make up the whole. The handclasp, the smile, the words of confidence or encouragement; these are the strength and bulwark of society, business, religion - and home life. Without them, there would be no trust; without trust, our world would collapse.

Business | Confidence | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Smile | Society | Strength | Trust | Wisdom | Words | World |

Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL

It becomes a wise man to try words before arms.

Man | Wisdom | Wise | Words |

George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner

Music has always had its own syntax, its own vocabulary and symbolic means. Indeed, it is with mathematics the principal language of the mind when the mind is in a condition of non-verbal feeling.

Language | Mathematics | Means | Mind | Music | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

It is not the eye, that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear, that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.

Accident | Beauty | Heaven | Music | Soul | Wisdom | Beauty |

Maurice Valency

No man can establish title to an idea - at the most he can only claim possession. The stream of though that irrigates the mind of each of us is a confluent of the intellectual river that drains the whole of the living universe.

Man | Mind | Title | Universe | Wisdom |

Edith Wharton

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways.

Change | Curiosity | Happy | Past | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Arthur Warwick

The speech of the tongue is best known to men; God best understands the language of the heart.

God | Heart | Language | Men | Speech | Wisdom | God |

Lyall Watson

There are around half a million words in the English language, but a recent statistical study of telephone speech discovered that 96 percent of all conversation over the wires consists of just 737 words.

Conversation | Language | Speech | Study | Wisdom | Words |

Mary Church Terrell

Please stop using the word “Negro”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven varieties of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.

Language | People | Wisdom | World |

Jacob Viner

Men are not narrow in their intellectual interests by nature; it takes special and vigorous training to accomplish that end.

Men | Nature | Training | Wisdom |