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

Samuel Pepys

Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

Man | People | Wife |

Samuel Pepys

Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

Man | People | Wife |

Samuel Pepys

Up and with my wife to church, where Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon on Original Sin, neither understood by himself, nor the people.

Church | Man | People | Woman |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

A person is at the beginning of a prayer when he succeeds in removing distractions which at the beginning beset him. He is at the middle of the prayer when the mind concentrates only on what he is meditating and contemplating. He reaches the end when, with the Lord, the prayer enraptures him.

Ability | Blessings | God | Good | Little | Man | Men | Mother | Pride | Purpose | Purpose | Receive | Skill | Will | Work | God |

Stephan Jay Gould

The progress of science requires more than new data; it needs novel frameworks and contexts. And where do these fundamentally new views of the world arise? They are not simply discovered by pure observation; they require new modes of thought. And where can we find them, if old modes do not even include the right metaphors? The nature of true genius must lie in the elusive capacity to construct these new modes from apparent darkness. The basic chanciness and unpredictability of science must also reside in the inherent difficulty of such a task.

Theodor Reik

He [Freud] often said three things were impossible to fulfill completely; healing, education, governing. He limited his goals in analytic treatment to brining the patient to the point where he could work for a living and learn to love.

Men | Wise |

Thiruvalluvar NULL

Those who give way to great anger are like the dead: those who are free from anger are free from death.

Thiruvalluvar NULL

To use bitter words, when kind words are at hand, is like picking unripe fruit when the ripe fruit is there.

Thomas Chalmers

The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is, that we believe what the Bible tells us and do what the Bible bids us.

Thomas Hobbes

For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State which is but an Artificial Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended; and in which, the Sovereignty is an Artificial Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body

Authority | Ignorance | Man | Memory | Men | Money | Nature | Sense | Wise | Words | Value |

Thomas Jefferson

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.

God | Past | People | Wishes | God |

Thomas Merton

If we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that viewing things from a basically different perspective—that of our adversary—we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically.

Enough | Mercy | Need | People | Society | Wants | Will | Society |

Thomas Paine

All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told.

New Testament | Old |

William Blake

If you trap the moment before it’s ripe, The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go, You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

Wise |

William Blake

Little boy full of joy; little girl, sweet and small;

William Cowper

A fretful temper will divide the closest knot that may be tied, by ceaseless sharp corrosion a temper passionate and fierce may suddenly your joys disperse at one immense explosion.

Little | Looks | Wit |

William Cowper

To dally much with subject mean and low proves that the mind is weak, or makes it so.

Revelation |

William Cowper

Then, shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how).

Harmony | Morality | Poetry | Virtue | Virtue | Wonder |

Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

When Gott made the womens, he was sorry afterwards for the poor mens--and he made tobaccos to comfort them.

Fault | Humor | Knowing | Wants | Will | Woman | Fault | Think |