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

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

The rich and luxurious may claim an exclusive right to those pleasures which are capable of being purchased by pelf, in which the mind has no enjoyment, and which only afford a temporary relief to languor by steeping the senses of forgetfulness; but in the precious pleasures of the intellect, so easily accessible by all mankind, the great have no exclusive privilege; for such enjoyments are only to be procured by our own industry.

Enjoyment | Forgetfulness | Industry | Mankind | Mind | Right | Wisdom |

Sven Birkerts

The reality of life is that your perceptions -- right or wrong -- influence everything else you do. When you get a proper perspective of your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other things fall into place.

Influence | Life | Life | Reality | Right | Wrong |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Each of us inevitable, each of us limitless - each of us with his or her right upon the earth, each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth, each of us here as divinely as any is here.

Earth | Eternal | Inevitable | Right | Wisdom |

George Frederick Will

Men and women are biological facts. Ladies and gentleman - citizens - are social artifacts, works of political art. They carry the culture that is sustained by wise laws, and traditions of civility. A the end of the day we are right to judge a society by the character of the people it produces. That is why statecraft is, inevitably, soulcraft.

Art | Character | Civility | Culture | Day | Men | People | Right | Society | Wisdom | Wise | Society |

Abū al-Hasan Alī ibn Ismā'īl al-Ash'arī

Nothing can be evil on the part of God. For a thing is evil on our part only because we transgress the limit and bound set for us and do what we have no right to do. But the creator is subject to no one and bound by no command.

Evil | God | Nothing | Right |

Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Love is in the air that I breathe, like oxygen. When I lack it, I feel atrophied, asphyxiated. When I have it, I feel I am growing. And so this growth is linked to others, or to a collective other. If I realize that I do not love you, my faith diminishes, and I breathe less and less of the oxygen of life. When I feel linked to you,in communion with you, there is a current of love that passes between us, and the intensity can multiply. And the more this love grows, the more the faith becomes luminous, the more I feel linked to the collective other. I am speaking of God.

Faith | God | Growth | Life | Life | Love |

Charles Hendrickson Brower

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.

Death | Man | Right |

Andrew Carnegie

Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends – the right of the laborer to this hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the right of the millionaire to his millions.

Civilization | Property | Right |

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

Lesson | Life | Life | Right |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

We are capable of finding unending meaning in a world of constant, shimmering, sometimes threatening change. The task is to keep the question of life in question, and to find in it an unending source of joy and possibility, even in the darkest of times. It is within the constant overcoming of our own limitations and habits, and of the established views of our age, that passive happiness and unreflective contentment are lost, then to be replaced by joyful activity and a glimpse of a broader, more enriching, and more responsible awareness than we have been capable of before.

Age | Awareness | Change | Contentment | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | Question | World | Awareness | Happiness |

S. Truett Cathy

Lives can be changed if you say the right thing at the right time at the right place with the right spirit… Words of encouragement, spoken or written, have a dramatic effect on a person…Well-intended words, even though they are correct, can damage relationships if they are not perceived as being offered with good will.

Good | Right | Spirit | Time | Will | Words |

Phillips Brooks

Great is the conduct of a man who lets rewards take care of themselves - come if they will or fail to come - but goes on his way, true to the truth simply because it is true, strongly loyal to the right for its pure righteousness.

Care | Conduct | Man | Right | Righteousness | Truth | Will |

Leo Busacaglia

Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don’t miss it.

Life | Life | Mystery | Right |

Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.

Efficiency | Right |