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

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

Earth | Liberty | Man | Mother | People | Rights |

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it...Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike - brothers of one father and one mother, with only the sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all.

Chance | Earth | Father | Government | Law | Man | Men | Mother | People | Rights | Spirit | Will | Government |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

A good and virtuous wife is the most precious jewel of one's life.

Good | Life | Life | Wife |

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers. These laws were good. They told us to treat all people as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break a bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth; that it was a shame for one man to take from another his wife or his property without paying for it. We were taught that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets, that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: If he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.

Disgrace | Good | Man | People | Property | Shame | Spirit | Truth | Wife | Will |

Chief Joseph, born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

Chance | Earth | Law | Liberty | Man | Men | Mother | Peace | People | Rights | Spirit | Wants |

Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

Can you imagine how painful and tough it would be, trying to be wise all the time? Thank God none of us try. Or trying to be good and pure all the time: Sir Lancelot or Mother Teresa? What a burden! I am sure Mother Teresa doesn’t try to be good. She just does what she has to do. That is the secret of great people, they just do what they have to do.

God | Good | Mother | People | Time | Wise | God |

Edmund Burke

Sickness is the mother of modesty, as it puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a sense of our duty.

Duty | Mind | Modesty | Mother | Sense |

English Proverbs

Experience is the mother of knowledge.

Experience | Knowledge | Mother |

Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The relation of love between husband and wife is in itself not objective, because even if their feeling is their substantial unity, still this unity has no objectivity. Such objectivity parents first acquire in their children, in whom they can see objectified the entirety of their union.

Children | Husband | Love | Objectivity | Parents | Unity | Wife |

George Herbert

One good mother is worth a hundred school masters.

Good | Mother | Worth |

German Proverbs

Who takes the child by the hand takes the mother by the heart.

Heart | Mother | Child |

Gloria Steinem

It’s clear that most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

Children | Father | Little | Mother |

Gloria Steinem

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

Children | Father | Little | Mother |

Henry Ward Beecher

God pardons like a mother who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness | God | Mother |

Henry Ward Beecher

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

Mother |

Henry Ward Beecher

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way to the coffin.

Mother |

Henry Ward Beecher

Experience is the mother of custom.

Custom | Experience | Mother |

Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

To the mother alone it has been given, that her soul during the nine months should touch the soul of the child, and impose upon it predispositions to truth, gentleness, goodness, the culture of which precious germs she should complete in the light of day, after having sown them in the mysterious mysteries of her maternity.

Culture | Day | Gentleness | Light | Mother | Soul | Truth |

Joan Borysenko

A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father, but it can be known only as love.

Father | God | Illusion | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Spirit |