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

Thich Nhất Hanh

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

Children |

Thomas Adam

God never makes any man what he should be, without first making him know what he is.

Children | Day | Will |

Thomas Carlyle

A heavenly awe overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought, and must, all earthly business whatsoever.

Thomas Carlyle

Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons able and willing to furnish the record.

Children | Men |

Thomas Chalmers

That balancing moment at which pleasure would allure, and conscience is urging us to refrain, may be regarded as the point of departure or divergency whence one or other of the two processes (towards evil, or towards good) take their commencement. Each of them consists in a particular succession of ideas, with their attendant feelings; and whichever of them may happen to be described once has, by the law of suggestion, the greater chance, in the same circumstances, of being described over again. Should the mind dwell on an object of allurement, and the considerations of principle not be entertained, it will pass inward from the first incitement to the final and guilty indulgence by a series of stepping-stones, each of which will present itself more readily in future, and with less chance of arrest or interruption by the suggestions of conscience than before.

Affront | Appetite | Children | Father | Forgiveness | God | Heaven | Imagination | Men | Right | Spirit | Will | Forgiveness | God |

Thomas Hobbes

The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Children | Liberty | Think |

Thomas Jefferson

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Children | Education | Life | Life | Wealth |

Thomas Jefferson

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Children | Control | People | Power | Property | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

Association | Better | Children | Will | Association |

Thomas Jefferson

I sincerely wish we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in and with such an immense patronage may make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.

Children | Harm | Will | Learn |

Thomas Jefferson

I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions.

Children | Man | Size | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them, and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

Children | Good | Life | Life | Public | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

If the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it.

Children | Consequences | Cost | Future | Good | Ignorance | Life | Life | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.

Children | Government | Paradise | Public | Surplus | Will | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.

Children | Time | Will | Wise |

Thomas Jefferson

The character of our coasts, remarkable in considerable parts of it for admitting no vessels of size to pass near the shores, would entitle us, in reason, to as broad a margin of protected navigation, as any nation whatever. Not proposing, however, at this time, and without a respectful and friendly communication with the Powers interested in this navigation, to fix on a distance to which we may ultimately insist on the right of protection, the President gives instructions to the officers, acting under this authority, to consider those heretofore given them as restrained for the present to the distance of one sea-league, or three geographical miles from the sea-shore. This distance can admit of no opposition as it is recognized by treaties between some of the Powers with whom we are connected in commerce and navigation, and is as little or less than is claimed by any of them on their own coasts.

Children | Control | Enemy | People | Principles | Property | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

Children | Commerce | Commerce | Learn |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

If the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time—and thereby renew our sense of life itself. That is the reason for every change of scenery and air.

Life | Life |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

But sometimes a person begins with opinions and judgments and valid criticisms, but then things creep in that have nothing to do with forming opinions, and then it’s all over with strict logic, and what you end up with is an absurd world republic and beautiful style.

Children | Love |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.

Man |