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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Two kinds of people: ... those who think and those who don't; the difference comes almost entirely from education.

Education | People | Wisdom | Think |

Eduard Shevardnadze

There must be some supreme, universal design. Each of us comes to life and stays in the world for predestined period. Some leave forever, sometimes without a trace; others stay for a long time, both in life and in memory. We remain longest - we make a difference - when we manage to act not for ourselves but for others. It is possible to create good and evil. The greatest and most important thing a person can do is to understand that where good exists, evil also resides; what’s more, one must strive to stay on the side of righteousness, doing one’s best to promote good in the world. Only you can make this choice. You alone will be held responsible - by other people, by your progeny and by history.

Choice | Design | Evil | Good | History | Important | Life | Life | Memory | People | Righteousness | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all evils arise which render us unhappy.

Imagination | Reality | Wisdom | World |

Jeremy Taylor

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit. Know therefore at the door before you enter upon your neighbor’s privacy; and remember that there is no difference between entering into his house and looking into it.

Curiosity | Spirit | Wisdom |

Tauri NULL

Expand your thinking of where you are to include your family - your neighbors - your country- other countries - a global village - the universe. Think not as a unit of one, but as a part of a unit of many. And look to the future with hope.

Family | Future | Global | Hope | Thinking | Universe | Wisdom | Think |

Richard Whately

A mother once asked a clergyman when she should begin the education of her child which she told him was then four years old. “madam,” was the reply, “you have lose three years already. From the very first smile that gleams over the infant’s cheek, your opportunity begins.

Education | Mother | Opportunity | Smile | Wisdom | Child |

George Washington Truett

There is a vast difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration is a concession; liberty is a right; toleration is a matter of expediency; liberty is a matter of principle; toleration is a grant of man; liberty is a gift of God.

God | Liberty | Man | Right | Toleration | Wisdom |

Lyall Watson

We are exactly like a galaxy in or fine anatomy. Matter moves through you and me as easily as the wind blows through the branches of a tree. And the boundaries we draw at the limits of our skin are as arbitrary as those which separate our solar system from the next one. Everything is indeed connected to everything else, in the best traditions of ecology, but it goes further than that. Everything is everything else. There is no difference - and nothing is impossible.

Nothing | System | Wisdom |

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

Change | Day | Example | Nature | Time | Wisdom |

Young “Savage” Seminarians NULL

You tell us that baptism is absolutely necessary to go to heaven. If there were a man so good that he had never offended God, and if he died without baptism, would he go to hell, never having given any offense to God? If he goes to hell, then God must not love all good people, since He throws one into the fire. You teach us that God existed before the creation of heaven and earth. If He did, where did He live, since there was neither heaven nor earth? You say that the angels were created n the beginning of the world, and that those who disobeyed were cast into hell. How can that be so, since you say the angels sinned before earth’s creation, and hell is in the depths of the earth? You declare that those who go to hell do not come out of it, and yet you relate stories of the damned who have appeared in the world - how is that to be understood. Ah, how I would like to kill devils, since they do so much harm! But if they are made like men and some are even among men, do they still feel the fire of hell? Why is it that they do not repent for having offended God? If they did repent, would not God be merciful to them? If Our Lord has suffered for all sinners, why do not they receive pardon from him? You say that the virgin, mother of Jesus Christ, is not God, and that she has never offended God. You also say that her Son has redeemed all men, and atoned for all; but if she has done nothing wrong, her son could not redeem her nor atone for her.

Angels | Beginning | Earth | God | Good | Harm | Heaven | Hell | Kill | Lord | Love | Man | Men | Mother | Nothing | Offense | Pardon | People | Receive | Teach | Wisdom | World | Wrong | God |

Joe D. Batten and Leonard C. Hudson

The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person is the difference between get and give. The unhappy person is concerned with: the world is against me, what’s in it for me, what are people doing to me, and so forth. When your central theme in life is getting you usually do get headaches. But the happy person is looking toward what he can do, what he can give, what he can accomplish.

Happy | Life | Life | People | World |