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

Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall

A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau's Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to "progress," the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America.

Character | Economics | Haste | Land | Life | Life | Logic | Oneness | Policy | Progress | Science | Tomorrow | Ugly | Will |

Benjamin Franklin

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

Haste | Time | Waste | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Riches amassed in haste will diminish, but those collected by little and little will multiply.

Haste | Little | Riches | Will | Wisdom |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

Haste | Life | Life | Love |

Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

Truth is strengthened by observation and time, pretenses by haste and uncertainty.

Haste | Observation | Time | Truth | Uncertainty |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

Whey should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Haste | Man |

Henry Van Dyke

How hard it is to confess that we have spoken without thinking, that we have talked nonsense. How many a man says a thing in haste and heat, without fully understanding or half meaning it, and then, because he has said it, holds fast to it, and tries to defend it as if it were true! But how much wiser, how much more admirable and attractive it is when a man has the grace to perceive and acknowledge his mistakes! It gives us assurance that he is capable of learning, of growing, of improving, so that his future will be better than his past.

Better | Future | Grace | Haste | Learning | Man | Meaning | Nonsense | Past | Thinking | Understanding | Will |

Henry Ward Beecher

Not what men do worthily, but what they do successfully, is what is history makes haste to record.

Haste | History | Men |

Kahlil Gibran

Make haste slowly, and do not be slothful when opportunity beckons.

Haste | Opportunity |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.

Affectation | Chance | Haste | Heart | Indulgence | Reverence | Sense | Story | Strength | Sympathy | Trust |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Haste | Journey | Time |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Haste | Leisure | Life | Life |