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

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work.

Character | Melancholy | Poverty | Work |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster.

Absolute | Change | Character | Excitement | Human nature | Nature | Novelty | Resolution | Surrender | War |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

Knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer.

Character | Good | Knowledge | Melancholy | Soul |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of money making with all their scorching days and icy nights... is the great fraud upon modern civilization.

Character | Civilization | Fraud | Man | Melancholy | Money | Prudence | Prudence |

Talbot Wilson Chambers

As the bosom of earth blooms again and again, having buried out of sight the dead leaves of autumn, and loosed the frosty bands of winter; so does the heart, in spite of all that melancholy poets write, feel many renewed springs and summers. It is a beautiful and a blessed world we live in, and whilst that life lasts, to lose the enjoyment of it is a sin.

Earth | Enjoyment | Life | Life | Melancholy | Sin | Wisdom | World | Blessed |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Beware of fatiguing them by ill-judged exactness. If virtue offers itself to the child under a melancholy and constrained aspect, while liberty and license present themselves under an agreeable form, all is lost, and your labor is in vain.

Labor | Liberty | Melancholy | Present | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Child |

Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher

One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Excitement | History | Men | Play | Respect | Rule | Safe | Unique | Wisdom | Following | Respect |

John Alexander Hammerton, fully Sir John Alexander Hammerton

One of the most melancholy things in the world is the enormous power for evil of the dead over things living. There is hardly a great painter or writer, or a man who had achieved greatness in any direction, whose name has not been used to repress rising genius.

Evil | Genius | Greatness | Man | Melancholy | Power | Wisdom | World |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Mirth itself is too often but melancholy in disguise.

Disguise | Melancholy | Mirth | Wisdom |

Caroline Norton

I can endure a melancholy man, but not a melancholy child; the former, in whatever slough he may sink, can raise his eyes either to the kingdom of reason or of hope; but the little child is entirely absorbed and weighed down by one black poison-drop of the present.

Hope | Little | Man | Melancholy | Present | Reason | Wisdom | Child |

Thomas W. Palmer

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth; instead of its introducing dismal and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Age | Better | Eternal | Melancholy | Old age | Reward | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth | Old |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man has other enemies more formidable, against which he is not provided with such means of defense: these are the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness of every kind, melancholy proofs of our weakness, of which the two first are common to all animals, and the last belongs chiefly to man in a; state of society.

Age | Defense | Infancy | Man | Means | Melancholy | Old age | Society | Weakness | Wisdom | Old |

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm | Melancholy | Wisdom |

Tauri NULL

The excitement of tomorrow's science will be in the discovery of the amino acids' memory storage capacities.

Discovery | Excitement | Memory | Science | Tomorrow | Will | Wisdom | Discovery |

Sydney Smith

I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy; one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugarplums on the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others.

Better | Life | Life | Little | Means | Melancholy | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

David Spangler

Ultimately, our purpose is to be so alive, compassionate and creative in our own lives that the whole universe quivers with excitement and enthusiasm and brings forth a new spirit, a new possibility, in our midst. Our purpose is to be both the womb and the midwife for the birthing into our world of a holy spirit filled with new potentials for life and creativity. We exist in order to quicken the creativity and spirit of our world so that new worlds, new wonders, new blessings may emerge... To truly appreciate the meaning of life, we must be prepared to let the meanings we have known stand in the presence of new insights and be transformed. We have no final answers, only the questions that lead to further discoveries, creativity and emergence. We are here that life may discover, know and express itself more abundantly for the blessing and fulfillment of all creation - past, present and potential.

Blessings | Creativity | Enthusiasm | Excitement | Fulfillment | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Past | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World |