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 Lamb

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

Nothing | Space | Time | Troubles | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A man’s life begins with the illusion that a long, long time and w hole world lie before him, and he begins with the foolish conceit that he has plenty of time for all his many claims.

Illusion | Life | Life | Man | Plenty | Time | Wisdom | World |

Elizabeth Klarer

In aging, the (one's) inner clock slows down while earth time remains constant. Your planet continues to move in three directions at the same time, giving to you your speed or flow of time, past, present and future. There is less time to do things as one grows older and time is speeded up because the living body processes are slowing down. Time is a wave-motion in a triple unity with light and gravity.

Body | Earth | Future | Giving | Light | Past | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom |

Lazerov NULL

People do not consume time, time consumes people.

People | Time | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

If subjectivity is the truth, the conceptual account of truth must include an expression of the antithesis to objectivity, a mark of the fork in the road where the way swings off; that expression will serve at the same time to indicate the tension of the subjective inwardness. Here is such a definition of truth: the truth is an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual.

Antithesis | Individual | Objectivity | Time | Truth | Uncertainty | Will | Wisdom |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

Old age likes to dwell in the recollections of the past, and, mistaking the speedy march of years, often is inclined to take the prudence of the winter time for a fit wisdom of midsummer days. Manhood is bent to the passing cares of the passing moment, and holds so closely to his eyes the sheet of “to-day,” that it screens the “to-morrow” from his sight.

Age | Day | Old age | Past | Prudence | Prudence | Time | Wisdom |

Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

Man | Time | Wisdom |

Melville DeLancey Landon, pen name Eli Perkins

A man who spends so much time talking about himself that you can't talk about yourself.

Man | Talking | Time | Wisdom |

Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov

Even if for every hundred correct things we did we committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be - and it will be in the judgment of history - great and invincible; for this is the first time that not a minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the working people are themselves building a new life and are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization.

Experience | History | Judgment | Life | Life | Majority | Organization | People | Problems | Revolution | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Francis Lieber

Great truths always dwell a long time with small minorities, and the real voice of God is often that which rises above the masses, not that which follows them.

God | Time | Wisdom | God | Truths |

Philip Larkin, fully Philip Arthur Larkin

Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, and leaves what something hidden from us chose, and age, and then the only end of age... Time has transfigured them into untruth. The stone fidelity they hardly meant has come to be their final blazon, and to prove our almost-instinct almost true: what will survive of us is love.

Age | Fear | Fidelity | Instinct | Life | Life | Love | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

If at any time all labor should cease, and all existing provision be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive - all would have perished by want of subsistence... Universal idleness would speedily result in universal ruin; and ... useless labor is, in this respect, the same as idleness.

Idleness | Labor | People | Respect | Time | Wisdom |

John Locke

Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.

Appetite | Children | Curiosity | Knowledge | Reason | Time | Wisdom |

John Locke

If there remains an eternity to us after the short revolution of time we so swiftly run over here, ‘tis clear that all the happiness that can be imagined in this fleeting state is not valuable in respect of the future.

Eternity | Future | Respect | Revolution | Time | Wisdom | Respect | Happiness |

Abraham Lincoln

When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say - and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.

Man | Reason | Thinking | Time | Wisdom |

Paul W Litchfield, fully Paul Weeks Litchfield

One realizes the full importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man's greatest capital asset is his unexpired years of productive life.

Life | Life | Little | Man | Time | Wisdom |

James Russell Lowell

In general those who nothing have to say contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.

Nothing | Time | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self control.

Consequences | Contention | Control | Man | Self | Temper | Time | Wisdom | Loss |

Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

We know that we are not limited by the accident of our birth or the timing of it, and we recognize the truth that we have always been around. We can reinhabit time and own our story as a species. We were present back there in the fireball and the rains that streamed down on this still molten planet, and in the primordial seas. We remember that in our mother’s womb, where we wear vestigial gills and tail and fins for hands. We remember that. That information is in us and there is a deep, deep kinship in us, beneath the outer layers of our neocortex or what we learned in school. There is a deep wisdom, a bondedness with our creation, and an ingenuity far beyond what we think we have. And when we expand our notions of what we are to include this story, we will have a wonderful time and we will survive.

Accident | Birth | Ingenuity | Mother | Present | Story | Time | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Ingenuity | Think |