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

Napoleon Hill

More gold had been mined from the mind of men than the earth itself.

Earth | Gold | Men | Mind |

Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas

A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.

Day | Man |

Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

Man |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold.

Gold | Good | War | Will |

Nikola Tesla

The papers, which thirty years ago conferred upon me the honor of American citizenship, are always kept in a safe, while my orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other distinctions are packed away in old trunks.

Gold | Honor | Old |

Nicolas Caussin

We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and the joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch, by which we may behold his works.

God | Gold | Heaven | Joy | Smile | God |

Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong. Gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes, and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battlefields of earth.

Gold | Light | Power |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Life is tremendously beautiful, but we never go into the unknown — and life belongs to the unknown. The more you go into the unknown, the further you go into the unknown, the more alive you become because then life has newness, youth. Nothing is ever repeated, hence no boredom is created. Every morning brings something new, unexpected, uninvited. Life remains a thrill, an adventure… but for that one has to be courageous.

Life | Life | Nothing |

Owen Feltham

Prayer should be the key of the morning and the lock of the night.

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture it amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity.

Death | Earth | Gold | Man | Self | Will |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Exercise! Walk daily. Take an early morning walk to keep your heart in good condition.

Good | Heart |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

I never miss three things: my meditations, morning and night; my exercises; and the service to others.

Service |

Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.

Day | Dirty | Gold | Learning | Little | Praise | Recreation | Words | Work | Gossip |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Every morning I offer my body, my mind and any ability that I posses, to be used by Thee, O infinite creator, in whatever way Thou dost choose to express Thyself through me. I know that all work is Thy work, and that no task is too difficult or too menial when offered to Thee in loving service.

Ability | Mind | Work |

Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

Every morning is like a new reincarnation into this world. Let us take it then for what it is and live each moment anew.

Paul Rudnick

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.

Need | Reading | Time | Writing |

Percy Bysshe Shelley

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

Birth | Earth | Eternal | Evil | Gold | Law | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mind | Object | Pleasure | Promise | Sorrow | Suffering | Truth | Universe | World |

Persian Proverbs

A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time.

Better | Gold | Right | Time | Wrong |

Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferrule of a law, which regulates every event in life — our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship — that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves. Our society seems no longer able to understand that it is possible to exist otherwise than under the reign of law, elaborated by a representative government and administered by a handful of rulers. And even when it has gone so far as to emancipate itself from the thralldom, its first care has been to reconstitute it immediately. "The Year I of Liberty" has never lasted more than a day, for after proclaiming it men put themselves the very next morning under the yoke of law and authority.

Care | Education | Existence | Government | Habit | Infancy | Kill | Law | Life | Life | Men | Society | Spirit | Submission | Thinking | Friendship | Society | Government | Understand |

Peter Koestenbaum

Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense.

Business | Decision | Destiny | Goals | Nothing | People | Tomorrow | Business | Understand |