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

Robert C. Winthrop,fully Robert Charles Winthrop

Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise, - all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.

Character | Dignity | Education | Ignorance | Justice | Slavery | Wisdom |

Arthur Warwick

It is not good to speak of evil of all whom we know bad; it is worse to judge evil of any who may prove good. To speak ill upon knowledge shows a want of charity; to speak ill upon suspicion shows a want of honesty. I will not speak so bad as I know of many; I will not speak worse than I know of any. To know evil of others and not speak it, is sometimes discretion; to speak evils of others and not know it, is always dishonesty. He may be evil himself who speaks good of others upon knowledge, but he can never be good himself who speaks evil of others upon suspicion.

Character | Charity | Discretion | Dishonesty | Evil | Good | Honesty | Knowledge | Suspicion | Will |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

He only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God - which knowledge and imitation are the only cause of blessedness... for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.

Blessedness | Cause | Enjoyment | God | Imitation | Knowledge | Life | Life | Philosophy | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | God | Blessed |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things.

Eternal | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Carleton Washburne

In our thinking we must preserve an open and enquiring mind, an ability to see things through the eyes of our opponents, a skill for understanding the motives and thoughts of those whom we oppose. Yet we must act in the light of the best knowledge and reason available to us at the moment.

Ability | Character | Knowledge | Light | Mind | Motives | Reason | Skill | Thinking | Understanding | Wisdom |

Alfred "Trader Horn" Aloysius, born Alfred Aloysius Smith

Man is born for action; he ought to do something. Work, at each step, awakens a sleeping force and roots our error. Who does nothing, knows nothing. Rise! to work! If thy knowledge is real, employ it; wrestle with nature; test the strength of thy theories; see if they will support the trial; act!

Action | Error | Force | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Nothing | Strength | Theories | Will | Wisdom | Work |

William Warburton

Of all exercises there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.

Character | Heart | Imagination | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Understanding | Wisdom |

W. H. Auden and J. Garrett

Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice.

Action | Choice | Evil | Good | Knowledge | Nature | Necessity | People | Poetry | Wisdom |

Roger Bacon, scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis meaning "Wonderful Teacher"

There in fact four very significant stumbling-blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, long-standing custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge... there are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience.

Authority | Custom | Display | Example | Experience | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Title | Truth | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

If civilization has profoundly modified man, it is by accumulating in his social surroundings, as in a reservoir, the habits and knowledge which society pours into the individual at each new generation. Scratch the surface, abolish everything we owe to an education which is perpetual and unceasing, and you find in the depth of our nature primitive humanity, or something very near it.

Civilization | Education | Humanity | Individual | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Leo Baeck

There is no new knowledge without a new problem.

Knowledge | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

It is not wisdom but ignorance that teaches men presumption. Genius may sometimes be arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as knowledge.

Genius | Ignorance | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Presumption | Wisdom |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place.

Eternal | Eternity | Events | Future | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Past | Present | Reason | Time | Wisdom | God |

John Christian Bovee

What man knows should find expression in what he does. The chief value of superior knowledge is that it leads to a performing manhood.

Knowledge | Man | Wisdom | Value |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

Genius | Knowledge | Life | Life | Wisdom |