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

Henry Ward Beecher

Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.

Health | Men |

Immanuel Kant

Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions. With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given a priori. In it alone is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be annihilated in thought, but in itself, as the universal condition of their possibility, cannot be so annulled.

Lying | Phenomena | Reality | Regard | Thought | Time | Think |

Isadora Duncan

No woman has ever told the truth of her life. The autobiographies of most famous women are a series of accounts of the outward existence, of petty details and anecdotes which give no realization of their real life. For the great moments of joy or agony they remain strangely silent.

Agony | Existence | Famous | Joy | Life | Life | Truth | Woman |

Horace Mann

Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.

Light | Paradise | Truth |

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 |

Japanese Proverbs

A warrior deems life a light thing when compared to honor.

Honor | Life | Life | Light |

John Churton Collins

In women pity begets love, in men love begets pity.

Love | Men | Pity |

John Quincy Adams

In what light so ever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

Bible | History | Knowledge | Light | Morality | Regard | Revelation | Virtue | Virtue |

Joseph Butler

Virtue is not to be considered in the light of mere innocence, or abstaining from harm; but as the exertion of our faculties in doing good.

Good | Harm | Innocence | Light | Virtue | Virtue |

John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know ho to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

Creativity | Day | Light | Men |

Kahlil Gibran

Reason is light in darkness, as anger is darkness amidst light. Be wise - let Reason, not Impulse, be your guide.

Anger | Darkness | Impulse | Light | Reason | Wise |

Kahlil Gibran

Know your own true worth, and you shall not perish. Reason is your light and beacon of Truth. Reason is the source of Life. God has given you Knowledge, so that by its light you may not only worship him, but also see yourself in your weakness and strength.

God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Reason | Strength | Truth | Weakness | Worship | Worth | God |

Loren Eiseley

When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will being that instant gone.

Absolute | Light | Man | Mind | Reason | Will |

Loren Eiseley

In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snails eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one’s head about.

Extreme | Light | Man | Mystery | Science | Sense | Wonder | Worth |

Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

The toddler is allowed to regulate his own exploratory behavior. What occurs as a result of this entire mechanism is that nature’s imperative to explore the world at large is overwhelmed by the greater imperative to avoid the pain of a broken relationship with the life-giving caregiver. What will be developed in the child is a capacity for deception as he tries to maintain some vestige of integrity while outwardly appearing to conform. Living a lie to survive a lying culture, the child forgets the truth of who he really is.

Behavior | Capacity | Culture | Giving | Integrity | Life | Life | Lying | Nature | Pain | Relationship | Truth | Will | World | Child |

Karl Barth

Man can certainly keep on lying (and does so), but he cannot make truth falsehood.

Falsehood | Lying | Man | Truth |

Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

Beauty | Heart | Light | Beauty |

Latin Proverbs

A fire can't throw a great light without burning something.

Light |

Joseph Campbell

Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar light into the world.

Light | Perfection | Strength | World |

Kahlil Gibran

The true light is that which emanates from within man, and reveals the secrets of the heart to the soul, making it happy and contented with life.

Happy | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Man | Soul |