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

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to lose time in order to gain it.

Children | Order | Time | Training | Wisdom |

Milton R. Sapirstein

It is not enough for parents to understand children. they must accord children the privilege of understanding them.

Children | Enough | Parents | Understanding | Wisdom | Privilege | Understand |

Sydney Smith

The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.

Age | Children | Death | Destroy | Education | Life | Life | Object | Occupation | Solitude | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Benjamin Spock, fully Benjamin McLane Spock

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children and the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

Children | Good | People | Wisdom |

Samuel Smiles

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Discovery | Failure | Mistake | Success | Will | Wisdom | Failure | Learn |

Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL

It is better to bind your children to you by respect and gentleness than by fear.

Better | Children | Fear | Gentleness | Respect | Wisdom | Respect |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

The most sublime labor of poetry is to give sense and passion to insensate things; and it is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons... in the world's childhood, men were by nature sublime poets.

Childhood | Children | Labor | Men | Nature | Passion | Play | Poetry | Sense | Wisdom | World |

Samuel Warren

What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the necessity for exertion; a bug-bear to children and fools; only a mere stimulus to men.

Children | Difficulty | Men | Necessity | Strength | Wisdom |

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 |

Francis Wayland

That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self-government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known - these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics.

Awakening | Bible | Children | Conformity | Control | Good | Government | Hate | Heart | Love | Man | Mathematics | Men | Nature | Philosophy | Power | Right | Self | Teach | Wisdom | World | Wrong | Bible | Truths |

Goodwin Watson

Children are unlikely to follow exactly in their parent's footsteps, but children will travel more easily over bridges which the parents use regularly.

Children | Parents | Will | Wisdom |

Tibetan Saying NULL

Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.

Mistake | Understanding | 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 |

William Wordsworth

Wisdom sits with children round her knees.

Children | Wisdom |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Fools with bookish knowledge, are children with edged weapons, they hurt themselves, and put others in pain. The half-learned is more dangerous than the simpleton.

Children | Knowledge | Pain | Weapons | Wisdom |