Great Throughts Treasury

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

Words

"Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on." - John Christian Bovee

"Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers." - John Christian Bovee

"The professors laugh at themselves, they laugh at life; they long ago abjured the bitch-goddess Success, and the best of them will fight for his scholastic ideals with a courage and persistence that would shame a soldier. The professor is not afraid of words like truth; in fact he is not afraid of words at all." - Catherine Bowen, née Catherine Shober Drinker

"There is no means by which men so powerfully elude their ignorance, disguise it from themselves and from others as by words." - Gamaliel Bradford

"It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity." - M. M. Brewster, fully Margaret Maria Brewster Gordon

"Their repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind." - Claude M. Bristol

"By the time the child can draw more that scribble, by the age of four or five years, an already well-formed body of conceptual knowledge formulated in language dominates his memory and controls his graphic work. Drawings are graphic accounts of essentially verbal processes. As an essentially verbal education gains control, the child abandons his graphic efforts and relies almost entirely on words. Language has first spoilt drawing and then swallowed it up completely." - Karl Bühler, fully Karl Ludwig Bühler

"What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"When thou prayest, rather let thy heart be without words than thy words without heart." - John Bunyan

"Oaths are but words, and words are but wind." - Samuel Butler

"No words suffice the secret soul to show, and truth denies all eloquence of woe." -

"Words are things, a small drop of ink falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." -

""Careful with fire" is good advise we know. "Careful with words" is ten times doubly so." - William Carleton

"The teaching of any science, for purposes of liberal education, without linking it with social progress and teaching its social significance, is a crime against the student mind. It is like teaching a child how to pronounce words but now what they mean." - Vernon Carter

"Those two fatal words, Mind and Thine..."Do not forget, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that there are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct, generosity, and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man; and when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body, love is usually born suddenly and violently."" - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

"Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us." -

"It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent ore the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real and immediate cause." - Adam Clarke

"Words are freeborn, and not the vassals of the gruff tyrants of prose to do their bidding only. They have the same right to dance and sing as the dewdrops have to sparkle and the stars to shine." - Abraham Coles

"Reprove the wise: your words will bring you thanks." - Saint Columbanus, aka Saint Columbanus of Bobbio NULL

"They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"Words... are the great foes of reality." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

"The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness. Never both be angry at once. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire. Let each; one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly. Never taunt with a past mistake. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another. Never allow a request to be repeated. Never make a remark at the expense of each other, it is a meanness. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence. Never meet without a loving welcome. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness. Never forget the happy hours of early love. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home." -

"Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse; but talking is not always to converse, not more distinct from harmony divine, the constant creaking of a country sign." - William Cowper

"Flowers are words which even a babe may understand." - Arthur Cleveland Coxe

"The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the... ecological chain of birthing, growing and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children." - Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter

"Think all you speak, but speak not all you think. Thoughts are your own; your words are so no more." - Shelagh Delaney

"We never seem to know what anything means till we have lost it. The full significance of those words, property, ease, health - the wealth of meaning that lies in the fond epithets, parent, child friend, we never know till they are taken away; till in place of the bright, visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow where nothing is - where we stretch our hands in vain, ands strain our eyes upon dark and dismal vacuity." - Orville Dewey

"I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes. What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias." - Albert Einstein

"All philosophy lies in two words, “sustain” and “abstain.”" -

"His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require." -

"The more ideas a man has the fewer words he takes to express them. Wise men never talk to make time; they talk to save it." -

"Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still." -

"Kind words are the music of the world. They have power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song which had lost its way and come on earth." -

"I have suggested that listening requires something more than remaining mute while looking attentive, namely, it requires the ability to attend imaginatively the another's language. Actually, in listening we speak the others' words." - Leslie H. Farber

"The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind." - Charles Sherlock Fillmore

"The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

"I develop the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any other that give the air of positiveness to an opinion, but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so: It appear to me or should not think it, so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so, or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit I believe has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinion and persuade men into measures that I have been, time to time, engaged in promoting." - Benjamin Franklin

"Remember, that time is money... Remember that credit is money... In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do. With them, everything." - Benjamin Franklin

"The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time or money, but make the best use of both Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; and with them, everything." - Benjamin Franklin

"'Tis not thy words, but how thou speakest them that leads thee to the pleasant things of life." -

"When you lead your sons and daughters in the good way, let your words be tender and caressing, in terms of disciplines that win the heart's assent." - Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna or by his Hebrew acronym Gra ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu")

"Young children possess the ability to cut across the customary categories; to appreciate usually undiscerned links among realms, to respond effectively in a parallel manner to events which are usually categorized differently, and to capture these original conceptions in words." - Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner

"By means of rational thought we have reached the opinion that God knows in advance only the possibilities open to a man in his freedom, not the particular decisions he will make.. It is the opinion of our religion that God never changes... and yet we find in the words of the prophets that God does repent over some things... It is impossible to solve this contradiction if we adopt the view that God knows particular things as particulars." - Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL

"Human faculties are common, but that which converges these faculties into my identity separates me from every other man. That other man cannot think my thoughts, he cannot speak my words, he cannot do my works. He cannot have my; sins, I cannot have his virtues." - Henry Giles

"By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life." - Jean-Baptiste Girard

"The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire." - Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words... Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonplace; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead. It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that take generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they are new." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words; the spirit in which we act is the great matter." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe