Great Throughts Treasury

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

Alexander Smith

Scottish Poet, Essayist

"A man can bear a world’s contempt when he has that within which says he’s worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell."

"A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity."

"Everything is sweetened by risk."

"The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time."

"There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury."

"To have to die is a distinction which no man is proud."

"Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human [mortal] life."

"Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life."

"Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile."

"We bury love; forgetfulness grows over it like grass; that is a thing to weep for, not the dead."

"When a men is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness."

"A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road."

"A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor."

"Death takes away the commonplace of life."

"Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings."

"If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well."

"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in recognition."

"Each man is the most important thing in the world to himself."