Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Success

"Few persons will leave their families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the place to which they are going." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology." -

"As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility." - Thucydides NULL

"The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation." - Thucydides NULL

"You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational." - Thucydides NULL

"The soul of man can never divest itself wholly of anxiety about its fate hereafter: there are hours when, even to the prosperous, in the midst of their pleasures, eternity is an awful thought; but how much more when those pleasures, one after another, begin to withdraw; when life alters its forms, and becomes dark and cheerless—when its changes warn the most inconsiderate that what is so mutable will soon pass entirely away. Then with pungent earnestness comes home that question to the heart, “Into what world are we next to go?” How miserable the man who, under the distractions of calamity, hangs doubtful about an event which so nearly concerns him; who, in the midst of doubts and anxieties, approaching to that awful boundary which separates this world from the next, shudders at the dark prospect before him, wishing to exist after death, and yet afraid of that existence; catching at every feeble hope which superstition can afford him, and trembling in the same moment from reflection upon his crimes!" - Hugh Blair

"Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam." - Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

"And all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." - William Shakespeare

"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. " - Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering

"O breath of public praise, short liv'd and vain! oft gain'd without desert, as often lost, unmerited; composed but of extremes: Thou first beginn'st with love enthusiastic, madness of affection; then (Bounding o'er moderation and o'er reason) Thou turn'st to hate, as causeless and as fierce." - William Havard

"But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. ... In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck." - William James

"The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous." - William James

"The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, it sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to the purpose." - William Matthews

"It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold." - William (Morley Punshon) McFee

"Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot." - Elihu Root

"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science." - Albert Einstein

"First spouses, I have learned, don't ever really go away--even if you aren't speaking to them anymore. They are phantoms who dwell in the corners of our new love stories, never entirely vanishing from sight, materializing in our minds whenever they please, offering up unwelcome comments or bits of painfully accurate criticism." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two...But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look thorough your heart, instead" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Not observation of a duty but liberty itself is the pledge that assures fidelity." - Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

"That I shall love always, I argue thee that love is life, and life hath immortality." - Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

"Stop thinking about your difficulties, whatever they are, and start thinking about God instead." - Emmet Fox

"The conscious discovery by you that you have this Power within you, and your determination to make use of it, is the birth of the child. And it is easy to see how very apt the symbol is, for the infant that is born in consciousness is just such a weak, feeble entity as any new-born child, and it calls for the same careful nursing and guarding that any infant does in its earliest days. After a time, however, as the weeks go by, the child grows stronger and bigger, until a time comes when it can well take care of itself; and then it grows and grows in wisdom and stature until, no longer leaning on the mother’s care, the child, now arrived at man’s estate, turns the tables, and repays its debt by taking over the care of its mother. So your ability to contact the mystic Power within yourself, frail and feeble at first, will gradually develop until you find yourself permitting that Power to take your whole life into its care." - Emmet Fox

"The Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world -whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself -is amenable to man's thought, and that he had dominion over it when he knows it." - Emmet Fox

"And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, IÂ’ve got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.[2]" - Eric S. Raymond

"If you have plenty of money, want not to see but to have seen a bullfight and plan no matter whether you like it or not to leave after the first bull, buy a barrera seat so that someone who has never had enough money to sit in a barrera can make a quick rush from above and occupy your expensive seat as you go out taking your pre-conceived opinions with you." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"Modern economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable materials, as its very method is to equalize and quantify everything by means of a money price." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity – the One of Parmenides – of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God – with a capital ‘GÂ’." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

"The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL." - Ester and Jerry Hicks

"The thought that you think, you think, which attracts to it - so you think it some more, which attracts to it - so you think it some more. In other words, when you have an expectation, you've got a dominant thought going on, and Law of Attraction is going to deliver that to you again and again and again." - Ester and Jerry Hicks

"Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise." - Eugen Herrigel

"There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!" - Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

"And so my thoughts have lead me to believe that childless men and women lead lives more fortunate than those with sons and daughters." - Euripedes NULL

"I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never - I've never - I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace." - Feisal Abdul Rauf

"The author in his book must be like God in his universe, everywhere present and nowhere visible." - Gustave Flaubert

"One today is worth two tomorrows." - Italian Proverbs

"Saying is one thing, doing another." - Italian Proverbs

"At last Frodo spoke with hesitation. 'I believed that you were a friend before the letter came,' he said, 'or at least I wished to. You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way the servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would - well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Few there were who could change his courses by counsel. None by force." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Folly it may seem. Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him?. We live now upon an island amid many perils, and our hands are more often upon the bowstring than upon the harp" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"For victory is victory, however small, nor is it?s worth only from what follows from it." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien