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

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Freedom | Insignificance | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Solitude | Strength | Truth |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

Individual | Knowledge | Relationship | Security | Thought | Woman | Thought |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

Knowledge | Time |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure--all the more intense for being held tightly in--his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours.

Knowledge |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention? To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident, remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Ideas | Knowledge |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.

Difficulty | Knowledge | Little | Mistake | Nothing | Time | Will | Think |

Pope Leo I, aka Pope Leo The Great, Pope Saint Leo I NULL

Short and fleeting are the joys of this world's pleasures which endeavors to turn aside from the path of life those who are called to eternity. The faithful and religious spirit, therefore, must desire the things which are heavenly, and being eager for the Divine promises, lift itself to the love of the incorruptible Good and the hope of the true Light.

Knowledge | Truth |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

An angel fell from Heaven without any other passion except pride, and so we may ask whether it is possible to ascend to Heaven by humility alone, without any other of the virtues.

Action | Fear | Future | Glory | Good | Knowledge | Light | Lord | Love | Order | Perfection | Present | Strength | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Blessed |

Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

One of the most admirable effects of holy communion is to preserve the soul from sin, and to help those who fall through weakness to rise again. It is much more profitable, then, to approach this divine Sacrament with love, respect, and confidence, than to remain away through an excess of fear and scrupulosity.

Fear | Knowledge | Labor | Teach | Work |

Stephan Jay Gould

No one should feel at all offended or threatened by the obvious fact that we are not all born entirely blank, or entirely the same, in our mixture of the broad behavioral propensities defining what we call temperament.

Insight | Knowledge | Life | Life | Meaning | Mind | Nonsense | Reality |

Stephan Jay Gould

In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Knowledge | Light | Promise | Trust |

Stephan Jay Gould

Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.

Evolution | Knowledge | Search | Understand |

Stephen Charnock

There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world make not succession, or new objects, in the Divine mind; for all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world in regard of their existence. He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once; “Known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world”; but in their true order of succession, as they lie in the eternal council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be a succession and order of things as they are wrought, there is yet no succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them.

Beginning | Belief | Change | Credit | Day | Doubt | God | Judgment | Knowledge | Man | Men | Opinion | Reason | Resignation | Thought | Title | Understanding | Wills | Wisdom | World | God | Think | Thought |

Stephen Charnock

This boundless desire had not its original from man itself; nothing would render itself restless; something above the bounds of this world implanted those desires after a higher good, and made him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest in that which is infinite, there is something infinite for it to rest in; since nothing in the world, though a man had the whole, can give it satisfaction, there is something above the world only capable to do it, otherwise the soul would be always without it, and be more in vain than any other creature. There is, therefore, some infinite being that can only give a contentment to the soul, and this is God.

Beginning | Eternal | Eternity | God | Knowledge | Order | Present | Regard | World | God |

Stephen Hawking

A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved goldfish bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish's picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real?

Glory | God | Knowledge | Lord | Praise | Reason | Sense | Soul | Spirit | Worship | God |

Stephen Charnock

No man is an unbeliever, but because he will be so; and every man is not an unbeliever, because the grace of God conquers some, changes their wills, and binds them.

Boys | Design | Desire | God | Joy | Knowledge | Men | Object | Sense | Soul | Will | God |

Stephen Hawking

Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.

Dawn | Desire | Enough | Events | Justification | Knowledge | Nothing | Order | People | Understanding | Universe |

Stephen Charnock

History doth not reckon twenty professed atheists in all ages in the compass of the whole world: and we have not the name of any one absolute atheist upon record in Scripture: yet it is questioned, whether any of them, noted in history with that infamous name, were downright deniers of the existence of God, but rather because they disparaged the deities commonly worshipped by the nations where they lived, as being of a clearer reason to discern that those qualities, vulgarly attributed to their gods, as lust and luxury, wantonness and quarrels, were unworthy of the nature of a god.

Change | Desire | Enough | Future | Knowledge | Means | Method | Power | Reason | Strength | Wants | Will | Wisdom |