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

Joachim-Ernst Berendt

We see that music does not merely take place within time. It also exalts and surmounts time. It is not just that the past and present merge. The future is also involved to the extent that within the harmonious progression of music the note sounding 'now' anticipates the future note in which it will be resolved The not to come is, as it were, contained in the present note, which could not otherwise 'summon' it. Anyone musical knows that it is hardly possible to break off certain cadences before the final note. The final note is 'there' whether it is played or not. It may sound out later - or not at all - but, viewed in a higher sense, it was to be heard much earlier. Time only completes what became necessary outside of time. It merely makes manifest what would otherwise have remained hidden.

Future | Music | Past | Present | Sense | Sound | Time | Will |

James Bryant Conant

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing, but that it is the external sign of an internal deficiency.

Knowledge | Nothing | Rest | Truth | Learn |

John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

Business | Government | Sound | Thrift | Business |

John Muir

When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.

Nature | Rest | World |

John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

Capacity | Individual | Rest |

John Ruskin

The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn, but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend.

Mankind | Rest | Spirit | Unity |

John Woolman

Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated.

Appearance | Beauty | Conduct | Harmony | Love | Meekness | Order | Right | Sound | Temper | Beauty |

Lewis Mumford

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life... Variation, experiment and insurgence are all of them attributes of freedom.

Beauty | Contemplation | Day | Experiment | Freedom | Life | Life | Mystery | Perfection | Poverty | Search | Sound | Truth | Contemplation |

Joseph Joubert

The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.

Authority | Life | Life | Nothing | Property | Sound | Writing |

Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter

Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

Age | Rest |

Luther Burbank

All plants, animals, and men are already in eternity, traveling across the face of time. Whence we know not. Whither, who is able to say? Let us have one world at a time, and let us make the journey one of joy to our fellow passengers, and just as convenient and happy for them as we can, and trust the rest as we trust life.

Eternity | Happy | Journey | Joy | Life | Life | Men | Rest | Time | Trust | World |

Joseph Jacobs

For 3,500 years, Jews have been telling themselves, their children, and the rest of the world: Be good. Be kind. Be honest. Be ethical. Be moral. It is the most revolutionary message in human history.

Children | Good | History | Rest | World |

Lord Fisher, aka Lord John Arbutnoth Fisher, fully Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone

Acquire good physique and mental robustness which comes from fresh air, sound and plain food, constant and compelling attention to waste matter, proper and peaceful sleep, and concentration on true religion, ethics, art and literature.

Art | Attention | Ethics | Good | Literature | Religion | Sound | Waste | Art |

Karl Barth

History is the display of the supposed advantages of power and intelligence which some men possess over others, of the struggle for existence hypocritically described by ideologists as the struggle for justice and freedom, of the ebb and flow of old and new forms of human righteousness, each vying with the rest in the solemnity and triviality... Yet one drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite things.

Display | Eternity | Existence | Freedom | History | Intelligence | Justice | Men | Power | Rest | Righteousness | Struggle | Old |

Joseph Joubert

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

Reason | Sound | Thought |

Kahlil Gibran

Love joins our present with the past and the future... Love is a divine knowledge that enables men to see as much as the gods... Love is a blinding mist that keeps the soul from discerning the secret of existence, so that the heart sees only trembling phantoms of desire among the hills, and hears only echoes of cries from voiceless valleys... Love is the rest of the body in the quiet of the grave, the tranquillity of the soul in the depth of Eternity... And so, all who passed spoke of Love as the image of their hopes and frustrations, leaving it a mystery as before.

Body | Desire | Eternity | Existence | Future | Grave | Heart | Knowledge | Love | Men | Mystery | Past | Present | Quiet | Rest | Soul | Tranquility |

Marsilio Ficino

The convivium is rest from labours, release from cares and nourishment of genius; it is the demonstration of love and splendour, the food of good will, the seasoning of friendship, the leavening of grace and the solace of life... Everything should be seasoned with the salt of genius and illumined by the rays of mind and manners.

Genius | Good | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Manners | Mind | Rest | Will |

Matthew Arnold

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

Creed | Dogma | Future | Illusion | Life | Life | Mankind | Philosophy | Poetry | Race | Religion | Rest | Science | Time | Tradition | Will | World |

Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

Freedom | Rest |