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

H. B.

I saw there was no boundary lines between vegetable and animal life, and hence no beginning nor end to either... All physical phenomena, at their best, are dull and murky till they come up into spiritual life. As an illustration that every law has its universality take the familiar law or principle that action and reaction are equal. What is this but reaping the whirlwind after one has sown the wind, or how does natural law differ from this teaching: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap?’ Are they aught but different strains in the great cosmic melody?

Action | Beginning | Character | Law | Life | Life | Man | Melody | Phenomena |

H. W. Arnold

The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success.

Character | Enthusiasm | Man | Success | Will | Wisdom | World |

Katharine Anthony, fully Katharine Susan Anthony

Foremost among the barriers to equality is the system which ignores the mother’s service to Society in making a home and rearing children. The mother is still the uncharted servant of the future, who receives from her husband, at his discretion, a share in his wages.

Character | Children | Discretion | Equality | Future | Husband | Mother | Service | Society | System | Society |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

There is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment.

Change | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations."

Character | Life | Life | Repose |

George Dana Boardman "The Younger"

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Character | Destiny | Habit | Law |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

James Boswell

It is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another.

Character | Conscience | Man | Rights |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

Happiness consists in the possession in aggregate of all good things.

Character | Good |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |

William Pitt, Lord Chatham or Lord William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, aka The Elder Pitt and The Great Commander

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor; and this I know, that, where law ends, there tyranny begins.

Character | Ends | Law | Power | Tyranny |

Avraham Moshe Chevroni

Whatever a person does without enthusiasm and joy is not truly considered doing. When a person lacks joy for what he is doing, everything he does will be difficult for him and he will not do it properly.

Character | Enthusiasm | Joy | Will |

Gaius Marius

The law speaks too softly to be heard amid the din of arms.

Character | Law | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other words, the same inward principle which teaches the former bears witness to the latter Duties and rights must stand and fall together.

Character | Duty | Rights | Sense | Witness | Words |

Howard Cosell, fully Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen

Courage takes many forms. there is physical courage, there is moral courage. Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead.

Character | Courage | Day | Enthusiasm | Joy | Life | Life | Pain |

William Ellery Channing

The great duty of God’s children is to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognize all men as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky, or institution or religion they may live. Every man belongs to the race, and owes a duty to mankind... Men cannot, by combining themselves into narrower or larger societies, sever the sacred, blessed bond which joins them to their kind... The law of humanity must reign; over the assertion of all human rights.

Assertion | Character | Children | Duty | Earth | God | Humanity | Law | Love | Man | Mankind | Men | Race | Religion | Rights | Sacred | Blessed |

Horace Bushnell

The nobles charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.

Character | Justice | Law | Learning | Religion | World |