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

Richard Whately

Every one wishes to have truth on his side, but it is not every one that sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth.

Character | Truth | Wishes |

Apocrypha NULL

Love truth and it will preserve you.

Love | Truth | Will | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And canst thou take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change? And canst thou be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Dost thou not see then that for thyself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

Change | Man | Nature | Wisdom | Afraid |

Pietro Arentino

I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.

Hate | Love | Truth | Wisdom |

Henry Major Tomlinson

The world is what we think it is. If we can change our thoughts, we can change the world. And that is our hope.

Change | Character | Hope | Wisdom | World | Think |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things.

Character | Dignity | Truth |

Henry Wotton, fully Sir Henry Wotton

How happy is he born or taught, That serveth not another’s will; Whose armor is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies,— What are you when the moon shall rise? An itch of disputing will prove the scab of churches. I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff. Idle time not idly spent. Now all nature seemed in love, and birds had drawn their valentines.

Character | Happy | Nature | People | Skill | Thought | Time | Truth | Will |

Aleyn NULL

The true and noble way to kill a foe, is not to kill him; you, with kindness, may so change him that he shall cease to be a foe, and then he is slain.

Change | Kill | Kindness | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

Change | Nature | Nothing | Wisdom |

John Stuart Blakie

Creation is the production of order. What a simple, but, at the same time comprehensive and pregnant principle is here! Plato could tell his disciples no ultimate truth of more pervading significance. Order is the law of all intelligible existence.

Existence | Law | Order | Time | Truth | Wisdom |

Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Better | Change | Wisdom |

William Beveridge

It calls in my spirits, composes my thoughts, delights my ear, recreates my mind, and so not only fits me for after business, but fills my heart, at the present, with pure and useful thoughts; so that when the music sounds the sweetliest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest into my mind.

Business | Heart | Mind | Music | Present | Truth | Wisdom |

George Bancroft

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

Beauty | Justice | Law | Moral law | Soul | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

How many years of fatigue and punishment it takes to learn the simple truth that work, that disagreeable thing, is the only way of not suffering in life, or at all events, of suffering less.

Events | Life | Life | Punishment | Suffering | Truth | Wisdom | Work | Learn |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

We look at change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we do not think about it. We say that change exists, that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason and philosophize as though change did not exist.

Change | Law | Reason | Wisdom | Words | Think |