Great Throughts Treasury
This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lord Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
English Philosopher
"Temper, if ungoverned, governs the whole man."
"The perfection of virtue is from... long art and management, self-control."
"It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self examiner."
"There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm."
"We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard work to do and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle - face it, 'tis God's gift."
"Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightness and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way."
"The heart is never neutral."
"The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of the face true proportions, the beauty of architecture true measures, the beauty of harmony and music."
"There is no real love of virtue without the knowledge of public good."
"In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything."
"Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way."
"Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance. The appearance of reality is necessary to make any passion agreeably represented, and to be able to move others we must be moved ourselves, or at least seem to be so, upon some probable grounds."
"The one and only formative power given to man Is thought. By his thinking he not only makes character, but body and affairs, for as he thinketh within himself, so is he. Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way."